


The Will of Heaven

by The_Carnivorous_Muffin



Series: The Demiurge [4]
Category: Fate/Apocrypha, Fate/Zero, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Attempted Murder, Betrayal, Dimension Travel, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Friendship/Love, M/M, Master of Death Harry Potter, Murder, Prophets, Religion, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-07-18 21:29:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 45,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16127111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Carnivorous_Muffin/pseuds/The_Carnivorous_Muffin
Summary: Only a year after Lily's participation in the fourth holy grail war in Fuyuki Japan, in the summer of 1997 Lily, Wizard Lenin, and Gilgamesh are summoned to an alternate dimension in Romania to battle in a holy war for the fate of the greater grail and consequently the freedom and hope of all mankind.





	1. Chapter 1

_“This tale is not one of servants, nor is it a tale of the masters who command them, and it is not a telling of saints either…”_

 

* * *

 

England, 1997

 

* * *

 

Lily sat out on the steps of the Riddle manor in the July heat, staring forward with a sigh and contemplating the short-term and long-term future as she saw fit. Her seventeenth birthday was just on the horizon and with it her latest and greatest year of Hogwarts.

 

Well, strike that, her last year of Hogwarts.

 

Her seventh year, it amazed her that she hadn’t managed to drop out or be expelled yet but here she was with her books already purchased, her summer homework done, and ready to be thrown back into the pit that was Wizard Lenin’s dystopic Hogwarts of the new regime.

 

Well, dystopic was a harsh word, that was what Neville had called it before he’d disappeared off into the wilderness with Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger to presumably track down and hunt Wizard Lenin’s horcruxes. Well, at least, that’s what Wizard Lenin assumed they were doing, the trouble was that he, being a paranoid bastard, had laid numerous lethal traps along the way for anyone looking in that direction.

 

Regulus Black had stumbled into one over a decade ago, Dumbledore himself only a year ago, and he fully expected the golden trio to do the same. Those who went hunting for Tom Riddle’s secrets were not long for this world.

 

More, in the end, they would have to track down Wizard Trotsky as well as the missing in action Hindenburg, both of which were easier said than done.

 

Which left Wizard Lenin free and able to do incorrigible things like get rid of the Hogwarts houses, Muggle Studies, and for whatever inexplicable reason that even Lily couldn’t quite understand make Severus Snape the headmaster.

 

She wasn’t sure if that last was meant to punish Snape, the children, or both.

 

However, as it was, Wizard Lenin was mostly distracted from ruling by the fact that, in his heart of hearts, Lily didn’t think he really wanted to be king. Oh, he liked the idea of it, he liked the hunt for power, but actually sitting up there on the throne and being forced to make decisions? Now that, was an entirely different story.

 

Lily had yet to tell him this (as he certainly wouldn’t appreciate hearing it from her) but she expected this whole “ruling Britain” thing to last maybe a few years at most, with or without Neville’s interference.

 

In fact, he’d given himself the timeline of five years with the resurrected Alexander the Great, who as they spoke was waging war and winning against MACUSA after having somehow managed to defeat and conquer magical Russia in winter. If MACUSA didn’t manage a miracle then it was all too likely that Iskander King of Conquerers would be knocking on Britain’s door with Wizard Lenin having only a few aurors to drive back his army of heroic servants.

 

Now, Lily wasn’t going to say to Wizard Lenin’s face that she expected, if push came to shove, that Alexander the Great would conquer the Britains but…

 

Out of the corner of her eye Lily spotted Ilya Einzburn and Rin Tosaka out in the walled, overgrown, garden of the Riddle estate. As usual, both were seated back to back and scanning their eyes about, searching for the traps of mages, dark vengeful wizards, or anything else that might come and tear their world apart.

 

Neither was eleven yet, or close to being shipped off to either London’s Clock Tower run by the Mage’s Association or else Hogwarts, but after both had been relocated with only the blunt unsympathetic news that their parents were dead to England, they still seemed to believe it was safest to trust in each other.

 

If they came close to trusting anyone else then, oddly enough, it was Wizard Lenin, Lily, and Gilgamesh just for having picked them up in the first place and not having done anything to them personally since. Wizard Lenin’s sycophants, rightly, were avoided at any and every cost.

 

Except, and the thing was, Lily just had this nagging feeling that they were caught in the eye of a hurricane. It was peaceful now, for them, for Lily, even for Wizard Lenin but the politics of Britain, Alexander’s imminent invasion, and even the holy grail itself could be seen just on the edge of the horizon coming ever closer.

 

And according to Wizard Lenin it would be a decade at least until the grail would make its reappearance in Fuyuki but…

 

Lily’s head left as she saw glittering light form next to her and transform into the solid, golden, form of Gilgamesh. He was looking as beautiful yet fashion impaired as usual, the difference being that he almost seemed to fit into Wizarding Britain with his decked out golden robes and garishly red tunic beneath all of this. Wizards being what they were, Gilgamesh looked far more in place and stylish than Wizard Lenin with his more conservative and almost muggle garb that he wore on a day to day basis.

 

However, as always, Gilgamesh had little time for Wizard Lenin’s insolent mongrel rubbish and made a show of either tolerating them or making an example of them for when their insolence crossed too many lines towards his magnificence. Both of the unfortunate LeStrange brothers had fallen victim to the latter after daring to question Gilgamesh’s relation to their lord and master.

 

Lily sometimes thought that Gilgamesh had changed from when she first met him, he sometimes mentioned that himself, and then other times Lily would think he hadn’t changed in the slightest.

 

However, there was no talk of that as he sat down beside her, eyeing her in some amusement as he asked, “And what is it, Lily, that has so fervently caught your interest?”

 

He looked at her in a way Lily didn’t think he quite looked at anyone else, with a peculiarly soft sort of fondness. To tell the truth, Lily wasn’t entirely sure what she was to Gilgamesh or what Gilgamesh was to her. It wasn’t quite like Wizard Lenin, he hadn’t been there from the beginning and Lily wasn’t sure he’d be there at the end. Yet, all the same, he’d inserted himself into her life and didn’t seem inclined to leave it. He would suggest traveling to Babylon every now and then but not with any real strength and never without Lily heading there with him.

 

As far as he seemed to be concerned, he and Lily really were man and wife with Wizard Lenin as his dubious and disapproving pest of a brother-in-law, which…

 

Well, Lily even a year later still wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. Even if he still did, even a year later and in oddly mortal form or whatever, have fantastic abs.

 

So, Lily just shrugged and blithely responded, “Hogwarts, Britain, the grail, the usual.”

 

A golden eyebrow raised ever so slightly as he asked, “Now, why you should find the first two even worthy of your notice is entirely beyond me.”

 

Lily just shrugged, not wanting to note that Gilgamesh probably had a point there, but not willing to argue fervently against it either, “Well, these are just the sort of things I have to think about. Hogwarts especially, you know, since September is almost upon us.”

 

“Yes, I remember,” Gilgamesh said, now with a rather dark and irate expression. Gilgamesh had not been a fan, last summer, when he’d realized that Lily would be abandoning him to Wizard Lenin’s company for six months while she went to hang around slavering teenage mortal mongrels (Gilgamesh’s words, not hers).

 

She had honestly been mildly surprised that Gilgamesh had had the patience to last even six weeks before crashing Hogwarts in October much to the student population’s awe and terror of the king of hero’s magnificence.

 

“Hey, I’m the one who has to go,” Lily pointed out, “And it’s not like I enjoy it.”

 

“Then why do it?” Gilgamesh asked in rather familiar annoyance and exasperation, the usual thing he asked whenever Hogwarts made any kind of appearance in a conversation, “You could be king of this hopeless nation, Lily, there is no reason for you to concern yourself with the expectations and amusements of mongrels.”

 

Lily could, and probably should point out, that by Gilgamesh’s own confounded logic then he was the only king there could any be of any nation ever so Lily could hardly be a king herself but that was a tangent they didn’t need to go down. Besides, it didn’t really get to the crux of the argument which was Lily was certainly powerful enough to not have to go to Hogwarts. She could, theoretically, hang out with Wizard Lenin and the gang or else maybe even embark on some mystical quest with Gilgamesh.

 

Gilgamesh was all for mystical quests, apparently having gone on quite a number of them back in the glory days of Babylon with Enkidu. Then, of course, his own infamous quest for immortality taken after Enkidu’s death.

 

Still, like always, she couldn’t help but point out with a bit of a glum sigh, “I don’t know, it’s not like I really have anything better to do.”

 

Tourism in the remnants of Babylon and modern war-torn Iraq did not count. She supposed there’d been that nagging undone thing in her mind, to search for Avalon and Arthur Pendragon’s grave, to see her again and the sword Excalibur where by legend they waited to be called upon again but…

 

It had seemed invasive somehow, more, Lily sincerely doubted that Arthur Pendragon would ever want to see Lily again after what happened. Perhaps it was best to let Avalon and Arthur be, to await the day when Britain truly needed them again.

 

He frowned as usual at that, “One should not partake of an action, Lily, solely because an acceptable alternative has yet to present itself.”

 

Still, she wondered if that was how he had wound up with the past time of casually stealing the wives of his general and noblemen. Because until Enkidu had shown up he couldn’t think of anything better to do.

 

Somehow, despite never having seen Gilgamesh in his nasty prime, she had the feeling that it was.

 

“My acceptable alternative is sitting on a couch for a year and watching reruns of Star Trek,” Lily said, before with a shrug announcing, “I’ll give the holy grail war that much, it was very suitable alternative to attending Hogwarts.”

 

Horrific, violent, and ultimately nearly ending the world, but it had still been leagues better than Potions with Snape.

 

Gilgamesh barked out a laugh, a sharp rather amused thing and noted, “I suppose it certainly was that, farce that it was.”

 

He then gazed out into the distance with her, frowning slightly, “Still, it was something of an opportunity lost.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

He didn’t look at he as he said it, just stared forward with a curiously somber and solemn expression on his face, “Heroes across the ages, and yet even with seven pulled from five-thousand years of human history, two of them pretender kings, not a single one was Enkidu. I would have liked for you to have met Enkidu.”

 

Lily wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, then again, she never knew what to make of Gilgamesh’s strange bouts of nostalgia where he would look back five thousand years to the day when Enkidu left the world. Sometimes, when he got like this, she would wonder just how deep and terrible his grief had been in Babylon when it had happened.

 

That it had pushed him to the very ends of the earth…

 

And Lily, even now, was not sure if that meant she would have wanted to meet Enkidu or not. Only knowing that, if he had been there, it would have somehow been a far different grail war.

 

“I suppose there’s always next time,” Lily said, sounding distant even to herself, ignoring Gilgamesh’s amused laugh at being pulled in for a second round of the holy grail war. The one that there really was no use avoiding.

 

Ten years, Wizard Lenin had predicted, ten years based on the calculation of the mages of the Mage’s Association, and then at twenty-six Lily would be in Fuyuki again facing only god knew what.

 

Her thoughts were interrupted by Gilgamesh leaning forward, brushing lips against hers with a surprising tenderness. As always, they tasted strangely of that divine golden light within him, the two-thirds of his soul that was anything but human…

 

Lily blinked owlishly, watching as he leaned back with a self-satisfied smile, “But today, Lily, is next time.”

 

And she smiled back, took his pale hand as he stood and offered it to her, and allowed him to pull her back into the Riddle manor and towards the guest room he had converted into his golden bed chamber with thoughts of anything but the holy grail.

 

Of course, Lily probably should have realized, that the world was a multilayered place formed of more than one dimension. Uncle Death was from one, Lily was from another, and in some other world where in the third war the uncorrupted holy grail had been stolen and spirited away to Romania, a fourth holy grail war was about to take place between the Mage’s Association and the Romanian Yggdmillennia clan.

 

Which, of course, as always, meant that some idiot had the gall to go and accidentally summon Lily as a servant.

 

* * *

 

An incantation going back centuries, formed by the original three masters of the first holy grail war, Matou, Einzburn, and Tosaka in Fuyuki Japan. An incantation which their descendants had all but written in their blood, and yet, not a single descendent stood as a master in this room or any other.

 

This was no longer their holy grail war.

 

“Elements of silver and iron, foundation of stone and the archduke of pacts, the color bestowed is black.”

 

Blood in a circle and pentagram upon the ground, silver light poured forth, the mana of both the mage and the holy grail itself, summoning forth from ages past and dimensions unknown with only the memories of a relic to aid the call.

 

“A wall for descending winds, close the gates on the four sides, come forth from the crown, and follow the forked road leading to the kingdom.”

 

A great wind rose in a still room as the four remaining Yggdmillennia masters summoned the last servants in the war that has now all but begun. The gate to time, space, and reality had been opened and the holy grail’s call unleashed out into the world as that final beacon of hope and destiny to all the warriors of the world.

 

“Behold, my will creates your body, and your sword my destiny. If you heed the grail’s call and obey my will and reason, then answer me!”

 

On each hand, the command seals engraved themselves in blood and light, the binding pact between master and servant.

 

“I hereby swear that I shall be all the good in the world and that I shall defeat all evil in the world.”

 

A flash of corresponding light, acceptance of their words and their pact, from each of the circles inscribed on the floor.

 

“Thou seventh heaven, clad in the great words of power, spring forth now, guardian of the scales!”

 

And just like that they were there, each out of time and place yet still kneeling before their lords and masters, looking up with hooded eyes as they spoke in one voice, “In accordance with your summons, we have arrived. We are the servants of black. We declare our destinies to be one with Yggdmillennia, and thus, our swords are yours to wield as well.”

 

Caules could almost feel his face twisting into one of joy, awe, and relief at the sight of his work, his success, in magecraft. For here was proof, recognition by the holy grail itself, that he was as much a mage as his sister and fit to participate in the war that Darnic has been planning for sixty years.

 

Darnic Yggdmillenia, patriarch of the family since before Caules was even born, motioned to Vladimir Tepish, his own servant, seated upon the throne as the dark-eyed Romanian king, “My king, before you are the servants our masters of black have summoned. In other words, they are your subordinates.”

 

The man seemed pleased, then stood, regal power in royal purple robes and addressed his fellow servants, “Those of you who have acknowledged the summons in search of the holy grail, your first task is claiming victory in the name of black faction.”

 

Caules sweated, itched at his white stiff collar and avoided the temptation the adjust his glasses. Out of the corner of his eye, even as he stared at Darnic, he could see his sister in her wheelchair flushing, pleased with herself and her summoned servant. His uncle, Gordes, still grinned, now with a saber class servant to his name, strongest of all servant classes. And Celenike, as always, shifted and looked upon her own heroic servant with lust and greed in equal measure.

 

“By summoning these servants, we Yggdmillennia have set foot upon a path to a battle from which we may never return,” Darnic reminded them all, as Caules had been reminded since before he could even remember, as one of the more talented mages of the Yggdmillennia clan.

 

“However, when this great war is over,” he motioned towards them, every gesture as powerful as Caules had always remembered it, “Those who have persevered as masters will be rewarded with infinite glory! There is nothing to fear, we already have the almighty granter of wishes, we are in possession of the greater grail!”

 

Thankfully, within only a few moments, it got much less dramatic. The electric lights were turned back on, the room was a wash of white, blue, and gold with the marble, the servants stood and gathered in a half circle of sorts, and Caules was allowed to breathe a sigh of relief that this, at least, was done and over with.

 

He adjusted his glasses finally, ignoring the way they slid up his nose from the sweat, and found himself looking over towards the servants. They must have noticed the change in atmosphere as well because that formal servant disposition was gone and what must be their true personalities were taking hold.

 

Rider, an odd thin tiny thing with pink hair was practically dancing in place, and even though Caules could have sworn he was supposed to be a man, that, Celenike had planned to summon one of Charlemagne’s famed knights if not Charlemagne himself, Caules couldn’t help but see a tiny overjoyed little girl in armor and a cape.

 

Of course, over the ages there had been countless women who had been rewritten as men or else were treated as men and saw themselves as men no matter their biological gender, but still…

 

“Alright,” Rider cried out in excitement, “May I have your attention please.”  


Except, Caules couldn’t help but think it wasn’t so much a question as it was a demand. That Rider clearly was going to tell them whatever he or she wanted anyway. Rider didn’t seem to even notice the rather nonplussed reactions of both servants and masters.

 

“Everyone who was just summoned should introduce themselves. I mean, we are a team for now,” Rider explained as he or she wriggled in place, “Oh, wait, I have a better idea. Why don’t we say our true names? It’ll be way more efficient!”

 

If it was possible the other servants looked even more nonplussed than they had before.

 

There was his sister’s summons, Archer, summoned by a preserved bow from ancient Greece and appeared as a tall olive-skinned man with long hair of a non-descript brown shade wearing ancient armor and tunic that you’d expect from, well, Greece. The only oddity that he could note was, that stick out from just where his tailbone was, was a long horse’s tail the same shade as his hair.

 

Then there was the even taller, silver-haired Saber dressed in silver and black armor save for a rip down his chest showing an old glowing scar from some long-ago battle. Summoned by an ancient Scandinavian blade.

 

Then there was his own servant, Berserker, summoned by an electric rod reputed to have been used by Doctor Frankenstein in his creation of his infamous and tragic monster, the mechanical homunculi. Yet… It was a red-headed girl, around his own age if not a year or so older than him, thin and lean and in the ordinary uniform you might expect of a girl enrolled in a magical academy. She was pale, paler than the rest by far, and her eyes a strange ominous green but otherwise…

 

There was nothing about her, he thought, that would make him believe she was a patchwork monster.

 

“Kay, then I’ll start!” pink-haired rider appeared to have taken their stupefied silence for agreement as he declared, with such enthusiasm that his pink braid bounced behind him, “You guys can call me Astolfo, I’m one of the twelve heroes of Charlemagne, and I’m a rider, nice to meet you!”

 

Astolfo then dashed over to his sister’s summons with glee and a giggle, standing on his toes to peer up into his face even as the man took a step backward in alarm, “And you are?”

 

The man glanced down toward his sister, meeting her eyes and watching as she gave a confident and solemn nod, and then looked back down towards Astolfo with a calmer and more amused smile, “Servant class, Archer, I am Chiron.”

 

Chiron, yes, centaur and teacher to Achilles before the Trojan war. Caules supposed that explained the horse’s tail.

 

He bowed slightly then frowned as Astolfo took the opportunity to take his hands and squeeze them in delight, “Hello Chiron!”

 

Rider then spun in place, twirled more like it, and finally landed on Berserker who looked at the tiny man with a rather unimpressed and dubious expression. Crossing her arms and cocking her head as if that would get her to parse Astolfo better.

“Okay, your turn!”

 

Berserker said nothing, for a moment, and then simply asked, “Do you have any idea just where you are and what you’ve agreed to?”

 

Her voice it was… It was not what he’d expected, not only was it far too human, far too pleasant, there was something almost otherworldly inside of it. Raw power that he’d never expected another mage, even of Doctor Frankenstein’s level, to be able to capture.

 

He looked at his hand, at the command seals as if they could tell him the answer, because he knew his own limits. He was not as powerful as his sister or his uncles, he… He hadn’t been able to summon a truly powerful servant, even with the aid of the homunculi used as batteries, because of that.

 

“Um, well, yeah…” Astolfo said, expression falling even as with chagrin he rubbed at the back of his head, however Berserker apparently was not mollified and instead simply more incredulous.

 

“This is a holy grail war,” Berserker said, sneering slightly on the name as if she was rather unimpressed, “In other, simpler, terms we are about to embark on a blood bath where all but one of us is going to die in the worst way imaginable for something that is basically the nuclear bomb of magic.”

 

That was… not really how Caules would describe the grail. He swallowed, felt himself pale as he watched them, mouth opening to say something or anything to contradict his own servant.

 

“But… We’re on the same team,” Astolfo pointed out but this just seemed to irritate Berserker further. She moved forward, flinging her hands dramatically in the air as she ranted.

 

“You’ve clearly never been in a grail war before,” she said, then motioned towards herself in a rather grandiose gesture, “As a veteran I can tell you, no matter what they say, or you think, there’s no such thing as same team in a grail war. Even between servant and master there’s not really such a thing as a same team. Give them half a chance, and I’m sure one of them will stab you in the back at the first opportunity. Or, in your case…”

 

She trailed off, glancing towards Celenike, whose deviant expectations of her servant were all but written on her face. Even though they were on the same team, even though she was his relative, Caules couldn’t help but shudder at what Berserker was implying.

 

Finally, her attention turned to Caules, her master. It was… He hadn’t expected her, him, the servant to look at him like that. He didn’t know what he had expected but it wasn’t eyes like hers, too sharp and too knowing and too something, “And to think I’ve downgraded from that sadistic dog Kirei Kotomine to something like you.”

 

Something like you, he felt himself flush, stammer, and point out, “You didn’t have to answer the summons!”

 

“It’s the holy grail war. Even in another dimension, even in this new and improved team edition versus the typical battle royale, when the greater grail’s involved, for the good of mankind, I didn’t have much of a choice,” she seemed rather bitter about that, as if she really had wished she could just say no, then with a sigh, turned her attention back to the stunned Astolfo, “Sorry about that, I just got out of round one of the war only a year ago, I wasn’t exactly excited about the prospect of round two. You can call me Lily.”

 

“Lily?” Astolfo asked, considering, eyes looking down Lily’s school girl uniform for some hint of her origin and powers.

 

Caules must have been feeling insulted or angry or something as he blurted, “Her name is Frankenstein.”

 

He felt his servant’s attention whip back to him, that unimpressed look back again, and said rather dully, as if she was afraid he might be too slow to keep up, “Her name is Lily and she does not particularly enjoy being talked about as if she is not standing right here. Apparently, I’m Berserker this time around and get to do what I do best.”

 

“What do you do best?” Astolfo asked, rocking back on his heels and crossing his arms behind his head, apparently more at ease now that a name and class at least had been given.

 

“Eat treacle tart and blow shit up,” Frankenstein’s monster, no, Lily said in a strange casual manner, “And I’m all out of treacle tart.”

 

They all just stared at her, blinking, while all Caules could think was that whatever he had summoned it was… He had no idea, just that he was beginning to think she really wasn’t Frankenstein’s creation.

 

Except… It had been Frankenstein’s relic.

 

“Huh,” Astolfo said, blinking slightly, and then finally turning her attention to Uncle Gordes’ servant, Saber.

 

“So, what’s your name?”

 

The man’s expression was haggard, Caules couldn’t help but think, already worn down before the war had even really started. Of course, maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised, heroes weren’t remembered for having easy lives after all but something in him seemed more tired than Archer, Rider, or even Berserker…

 

“I am—” he started but was immediately cut off by Uncle Gordes.

 

“Hold it!” Uncle Gordes walked in front of the man, no, almost strutted until he stood directly in front of him, “Saber, don’t you dare say another word!”

 

There was a sudden, bitter, feeling of distrust and tension in the room. Caules unwillingly felt his eye fall on his own servant, Lily, who was looking at him with bitter and rather knowing amusement. Suddenly Caules found himself remembering all the details of the first three holy grail wars, the carnage and the bloodshed and betrayal upon betrayal even among family.

 

Except…

 

Except this time, it was not the same. This time there were fourteen servants, a red team supplied by the Mage’s Association and the Clock Tower and a black team provided by Yggdmillennia in Romania. This time they had the greater grail, they had the goal of defeating the mage’s association and legitimizing their own Yggdmillennia association, and afterwards they could all battle it out for the holy grail when the Clock Tower forces were defeated.

 

More, these weren’t distant unknown relatives pitted against one another, but a family of mages with his older sister, uncle, cousins, and Uncle Darnic himself leading them into battle as he had been planning to for decades.

 

And they already had the greater grail.

 

As Darnic had said, even though some of them could die, they had nothing to fear. They had all but already won this war.

 

Celenike’s cold, cruel, voice cut in, “We agreed to disclose true names in advance, didn’t we?”

 

Gordes seemed unaffected as he turned to stare at her, “I’m rescinding that, the less people who know your true names, the better.”

 

Caules looked towards his sister, who was staring over at Uncle Gordes and likely knowing and fearing the worst. Finally, her eyes moved to Uncle Darnic and she asked, quietly and pleadingly, “Uncle Darnic?”

 

For a moment the tension was palpable but then Darnic said, “That’s fine, Gordes, as long as you hold responsibility for it.”

 

“Of course,” Gordes said, unshakingly, as if Darnic’s cryptic words did not bother him the least. That he would have to hold responsibility for that.

 

“This is the beginning,” Vlad stood once again from the throne, looking down on them all, “With our combined power, we will easily be able to annihilate the red faction and their servants. My proud and fearless heroes, I look forward to your brave achievements.”

 

Then, with a rather intimidating look, he introduced himself, “I am Vlad Tepish of Romania, to defend my country and to grant my own wish, I swear I will emerge victorious!”

 

All the servants bowed before him, all, except that is, Berserker. Instead she got an oddly curious look on her face, darted forward in a manner almost similar to the overeager Astolfo, and asked with stars practically dancing in her deep green eyes, “You mean you’re Vlad the Impaler? As in Dracula?”

 

Everything seemed to freeze, the shadows grew colder, it was as if the very earth beneath their feet trembled. Berserker, however, seemed entirely oblivious as she grinned and darted forward to the throne and its king with all the bullheadedness you could expect from Berserker, “Oh I know several vampires who, well, I don’t know if I’d call them fans, but they certainly know of your work. Although, I’ll admit that Frank considers you quite the useless womanizer who could have gotten a lot more done if he’d just laid off the whole English wife-stealing bit. Still, what does he know, you’re famous and he’s a dweeby secretary!”

 

She did not explain who this Frank was, instead darted up the steps and raised her hand out towards his as if to shake it, “You meet the oddest assortment of characters during a grail war.”

 

For a moment Vlad Tepish said nothing, merely glared down upon her, and finally he said, “For your insolence I would see you impaled on a spike and banished from my kingdom. For your naïve disregard of my work and my legend I would see you tortured into the afterlife and beyond, as immortal as that reputation forced upon me by my craven enemies…”

 

His lips twisted into a grimace and then a cruel smile, “But there is a war to be won and work to be done. I look forward to the end of the red faction and the beginning of your end, Lily, Berserker of Black.”

 

Lily just smiled, withdrew her hand, and noted with almost wry amusement, “I have faced gods as well as kings and survived, your majesty, death holds no dominion over me.”

 

She skipped down the steps, two at a time until she landed back on the marble floor with the other servants and masters. Finally, with one look back up and putting her hands into her pockets, ignoring the glare of the man as well as the other masters, “Besides, I’m the only one here who seems to remember that, at the end of the day, there can only be one lord of the rings.”

 

With that, she offered them each a shallow bow, and then walked out of the room, black modern shoes tapping against the marble floor until she was out in the hallway without even a glance behind her. Without even a glance towards Caules, the master who had summoned her into the grail war in the first place.


	2. Chapter 2

The first words Gilgamesh said to his fool of a master in this second holy grail war was a simple statement of fact, “Mongrel, that I have agreed to your summons is only on the condition that my wife has traveled on before me. Should you stand in way of that or dare to presume yourself my master instead of a lowly source of mana, then I shall cast you down and crush you underneath my heel like the miserable worm you undoubtedly are.”

 

And that was the simple, unignorable, truth of the matter.

 

Gilgamesh no longer sought out entertainment on the mortal plane, he had seen it for all that it was worth and had carved his own corner into it once again. He found it at times confounding and distasteful, overrun by dogs who dared to call themselves men, but he had contented himself to let it lie for at least a few decades.

 

Similarly, he had seen the holy grail for all it was worth and had determined, swiftly enough, that whatever it might be it did not belong in his treasury. It was at its heart a corrupted, broken, thing that spewed forth the curse of mankind. Gilgamesh had no use for it.

 

No, only that Lily had disappeared weeks before he had, vanished into thin air with only an alarmed look on her face and the stilted words, “I’ll be back,” tumbling from her lips had piqued his interest enough to not only answer the call but subjugate himself to yet another unworthy mongrel for a master.

 

The memories of Tokiomi Tosaka still chafed, and yet Lily was worth enough that he had still come for her. He had once jumped into the black waters of hell for that woman, a grail war, surely, was worth nothing more than that.

 

Rottweil Berzinsky, mercenary magus for hire by the Clock Tower association and a member of this so-called red team that Gilgamesh had been summoned into in the role of Archer once again, was fool enough to disregard Gilgamesh’s warning.

 

Then again, the man appeared to be a fool in many regards. First, in that he had not expected Gilgamesh but instead some lesser archer by the name of Atalanta, but that he would gleefully trade this unsummoned servant for Gilgamesh’s own glory. Second, that in the spirit of team-work and strength in numbers, he had sought to meet their director and master of Assassin.

 

A priest by the name of Shirou Kotomine.

 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, since that first meeting in the Romanian church Kotomine called his base of operations, where they had face to face met the priest as well as his presumptuous pretender-woman-king servant, Gilgamesh had seen neither hide nor hair of the man. Gilgamesh would suspect his fool of a master had died if not for the mana still binding the king of heroes to this plane of reality.

 

His orders now came direct from Kotomine himself, an oddly nostalgic and ironic turn of events, as the last mongrel Gilgamesh had known by the name of Kotomine had dutifully played the role of the servant, taking orders just as Gilgamesh himself had. At least, until it had no longer suited him to.

 

The man looked nothing like his namesake. Other than the tanned skin there was not a hint of Kirei Kotomine within Shirou Kotomine. This second was too boyish looking, eyes too wide and filled with faith rather than the mockery that had existed within Kirei, his white wild hair did nothing to help matters either. More, there was not the same air of repression that had existed in Kirei, that denial and twisting of a soul to hide his monstrous form from sight. This was a man who knew what he wanted, believed in what he wanted, and would do nothing less than enter a holy grail war to get it.

 

However, this doppelganger of his old acquaintance from wars past was hardly enough to hold Gilgamesh’s interest or distract from his new… comrades. Naturally, aggravatingly, it seemed that Lily was not among them and had either been summoned onto this black team they opposed or else was on some other plane entirely.

 

Which left Gilgamesh in the mongrel pit that proved more aggravating, more insulting, than even the last grail war.

 

The king of conquerors and king of knights had both proved themselves worthy of his regard in time, hardly worthy of kingship, but certainly worthy of something. Similarly, the previous war had featured his camaraderie with Lily and their rather quick nuptials. Even his brother-in-law, the mage Lily insisted upon calling Lenin, had not been so awful a master as he easily could have been.

 

This war, thus far, featured yet another woman who would be king. However, where the king of knights, Arthur Pendragon, had held herself high and proud under the crushing burden of human ideals and hope, this Semiramis did anything but. She was the snake-eyed, sneaking, thief of a king who gained and maintained her power through boorish deceit and cunning. Worse yet, where Arthur Pendragon and Alexander of Macedonia had claimed lands outside of his own, this woman had the gall to take Assyria and Babylon from him as if he did not still hold dominion even thousands of years after his death.

 

Rider, a man by the name of Achilles, was perhaps just as aggravating even without bearing the title of king. His unfounded arrogance made Gilgamesh grit his teeth every time he entered the room, more, the man was not quite human and beloved of the gods. You could almost smell it on him, the divinity of half of his soul, and the way that the light caressed his olive skin in such a fond and loving manner. Gilgamesh had never been particularly beloved of the gods, one third mortal that he was, and they had fickly both blessed and damned him with Enkidu paying the price. To see the unwitting arrogance of this man, this half-god…

 

Lancer, though thankfully quiet, himself also bore the taint of divinity and paid the world so little mind that it did not even appear to cross his mind to pay Gilgamesh the respect he deserved. Though not quite so aggravating as the first two, he was, combined with them yet another mongrel to act as sandpaper against Gilgamesh’s skin.

 

Caster, a man by the name of William Shakespeare whose works Giglaemesh’s wife seemed inordinately fond of, would have been refreshing, were he not an utter idiot who constantly felt the need to spout senseless drivel. And the few times he didn’t spout drivel he seemed inclined to provoke his conversation partner as one might bait a dragon.

 

His first true words to Gilgamesh had been regarding the death of Enkidu and the thief of a snake who had stolen Gilgamesh’s reclaimed youth. And were the man not so unworthy that Gilgamesh could not even bring himself to sully one of his swords with his blood then he would not have been long for this world.

 

As it was, Gilgamesh found that the man aggravated the woman-king even more than he did Gilgamesh and was thus allowed to live, for now.

 

He held out little hope for the last, the swordsman, whose master had at last arrived in Kotomine’s borrowed chapel while Gilgamesh watched with a glass of wine from the shadows of the balcony overlooking the pews.

 

The master was a stocky, older man dressed in the modern wear that mages in this era typically despised. For a jacket he wore a faded leather to match the leather of his boots, his eyes and scars hidden behind a dark pair of sunglasses, and his hair styled in a manner that Lily would say screamed insolence and rebellion of the 1980’s.

 

He stood with that deliberate casualness that Lily herself was rather fond of, something that would fit a younger man, but looked oddly worn and resigned on his older body. His hands and mana wreaked of graveyards and things best left buried, a necromancer.

 

His was the persona of a man who had never wanted to be a mage but had, after too many years and too many trials, reconciled himself with his fate and lineage.

 

“I had an appointment arranged here,” he said, knocking on the wooden pews as he surveyed Kotomine’s curved back in prayer, “Are you the person I’m supposed to be talking to?”

 

Kotomine stood and turned to face the man with that far too pleasant smile he always wore, “This is correct. I’m sure you’ve guessed, but I am the director. My name is Shirou Kotomine.”

 

“And I’m Kairi Sisigou,” the man responded, unmoving from his position in the back of the church, “Mind if we just skip the pleasantries?”

 

However, as he had been with Gilgamesh’s master and Gilgamesh himself, Kotomine was unperturbed and merely walked forward with a smile and agreed, “No, I don’t mind at all. And your servant there?”

 

A sudden flash of blue light and the materialization of the red saber. There was… an odd air of familiarity about the figure. He could hardly say why, he didn’t know the armor, only knew that it was ostentatious and lacking in taste and efficiency. It was too bulky for the swordsman’s small frame, as if aiming to add size for intimidation rather than protection, stripes of crimson in the steel along with a pair of devil’s horns sticking from the helmet only added to the tasteless aesthetics.

 

Certainly, this was not the armored dress of Arthur Pendragon of the last grail war, and was not a look he recognized from the days when he had roamed the earth as a living man.

 

And yet, as the devil-knight held up his hand, a woman’s voice rang out that again sparked some distant chord of recognition in him, “Something isn’t right, allow me to stay, Master.”

 

Introductions continued, Assassin revealing herself with the knight and opposing master saying nothing in turn. Meanwhile, Gilgamesh’s mind and memory focused in on the woman-knight even as he sipped on the subpar wine Kotomine had offered him as tribute. Perhaps, simply because it was a woman’s voice in that kind of armor, he felt the inclination to compare her to Saber of the last war, Arthur Pendragon.

 

There was a similarity in the tone, in the assertive stubborn pride of it. They were also of eerily similar height, as beneath that armor Gilgamesh more than believed the woman was of the same stature of the king of knights.

 

Still, the king of knights had had far more… taste than this, far too much pride and righteousness to go around dressed as the devil himself.

 

More importantly though, he thought to himself, it was not Lily beneath that armor.

 

Soon enough they relocated themselves to the pews, discussing this mongrel servant and that mongrel servant, leaving Gilgamesh to sigh and wish that he could trade one Kotomine for another, because at the very least Kirei Kotomine had never been boring. A fool, certainly, a mongrel, undoubtedly, but hardly dull.

 

He supposed the one benefit of this little arrangement of his was that Kirei Kotomine, without the command seals to Gilgamesh’s soul, had little to no power over him. Oh, he presumed to instruct Gilgamesh, had commanded him to accompany the little Greek demigod to scout the perimeter of Yggdmillennia territory. However, they both knew that, should the king of heroes desire instead to run through Kotomine’s alcohol stores, then there was nothing he could do to stop it save summon Gilgamesh’s mongrel master from whatever coma the she-devil king had put him under.

 

And so here, spying upon these little meetings in the balcony, Gilgamesh stubbornly remained until he deigned to do otherwise.

 

Kotomine’s voice cut through Gilgamesh’s thoughts, “Also, the summoning of a Ruler class has recently been confirmed.”

 

Now that, was news.

 

Gilgamesh straightened, glanced over the balcony towards the masters and their servants, an odd juxtaposition as always of the modern age and times passed by. Saber’s master, Sisigou, inclined his head as he put together his thoughts, “So there’s a fifteenth servant out there, huh?”

 

“Ruler is the class that organizes a holy grail war,” Kotomine calmly explained, “Naturally, one would be summoned for this great holy grail war.”

 

At his movement he saw Saber look up, slits for eyes landing on him in the balcony. He offered her a smirk, a slight wave, and watched as she stiffened just as the king of knights would have. Interesting.

 

Soon after, Sisigou left, the only master wise and paranoid enough to rebuff Kotomine’s invitation. He walked out of the church with his knight, leaving Gilgamesh to contemplate this new information and his director to contemplate the loss of Saber.

 

So, Lily could be either a servant of black or else a Ruler and organizer of the grail war itself. A class that had, oddly enough, not been present for the war in Fuyuki.

 

“King of heroes, must you loiter up there like some oversized bird of prey?” the Assyrian she-king asked, turning her yellow snake eyes to glare up at him, “You’ve scared off our Saber.”

 

“Mongrel,” Gilgamesh said, leaning over the balcony to look down at Assassin and her smiling idiot of a master with all the fond contempt he could muster, “Do not blame me for your own distastefulness and failings. That you have failed to seduce the pair means that they are only slightly less of fools than the rest.”

 

The woman let out a displeased hum, crossing her arms beneath her pale breasts, “And yet one of those fools you mock is your own master.”

 

He laughed, a darkly amused thing, drank from his wine and thought oddly enough of all those politicians in Babylon so many years ago and how they would scurry and vie for his favor and, failing that, lay blame at his feet as if a king was a thing who could be blamed, “I am well aware of that, hag. That you would presume I am not makes you even more of a worthless, presumptuous, thief and braggart than I had assumed you already were.”

 

“And we couldn’t learn Saber’s true name either,” Kotomine said still sitting hunched in the pew, deep in thought, interrupting Gilgamesh and Assassin’s trading of barbed insults, “A noble phantasm may have protected it…”

 

“Now what?” Semiramis asked, quick enough to move on from blame to the practicalities of the situation, “They should be dealt with quickly, you know.”

 

Yes, Gilgamesh imagined that was how the women had maintained her stolen title as king, by dealing with problems efficiently and quickly.

 

However, Kotomine was unmoved, oddly bright-eyed and cheerful given his failure to recruit the swordsman, “Those two also seek the holy grail, which means they are allies, for the moment.”

 

“Have you not heard, maggots, that there can only be one lord of the rings?” Gilgamesh asked, golden eyebrows raising as he looked down on the entirely too presumptuous pair. Honestly, Gilgamesh enjoyed intrigue as much as the next, but there was a point when betrayal and backstabbing stopped being clever and merely became tedious.

 

One only had to see the dealings of his brother-in-law to find that out.

 

Assassin sighed and glared back up at him, distracted from her own infatuation with the priest to remember Gilgamesh’s existence, “Oh, and I suppose that would be you?”

 

What an unworthy woman, he thought to himself. Were he not already here with his own mission and goal he would strike her down and defile the walls of this church with her ungrateful blood. As it was, as soon as he found Lily and whatever mongrel had stapled command seals to her soul, he might still spare a moment or to for retribution among these hacks who called themselves the red team.

 

“If the grail was mine it would be in my treasury already,” Gilgamesh instead scoffed, swirling his wine, “I, naturally, have no interest in such worthless prizes.”

 

The woman opened her mouth, likely to spout some useless misunderstanding drivel about the worth of the grail or Gilgamesh’s own goals, but was interrupted by worthless drivel of a different kind as the doors to the church slammed open, “Please, a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!”

 

Richard the Third, by William Shakespeare, Gilgamesh thought with a sigh. Which meant that, of course, Shakespeare in the flesh was walking through with grandiose dramatic gestures as always.

 

Lily would be so disappointed that a man whose works she so admired turned out to be himself little more than one of her automatons, capable of little more than quoting his own best works. Though, perhaps it would do her some good, as she could do with some reminding that all but a select few of the world’s population were unworthy mongrels.

 

Still, his appearance might as well be Gilgamesh’s cue to leave. Whatever information or entertainment to be gathered here was done. It was time that Gilgmaesh started tracking down his wife or else sacking the audacious cities which hid her from view.

 

Gilgamesh stood and dematerialized into golden light, drawing upon his absent master’s mana to move himself out of the church and out towards the city of Trifas where the black faction and likely Ruler awaited his presence.

 

* * *

 

Early morning and a few hours to adjust had not made things any easier. He supposed on the plus side he’d managed to find Frankenstein’s monster, or, well Berserker, eventually. Granted, that in and of itself had taken almost the whole night searching every crook and cranny the Yggdmillennia castle, and just when he was about to give up he found her right back where they’d started in the throne room with her lounging in Lancer’s makeshift throne.

 

He’d always thought Berserkers were supposed to be, well, anything but subtle. They weren’t supposed to hide, weren’t supposed to have any kind of forward thinking or ability to plan. The trouble and great difficulty of the Berserker servant was in restraining their inherent recklessness and stopping them from bleeding your mana dry.

 

With homunculi bred and used as magical batteries in the castle, theoretically Caules didn’t have to worry about that second one, but he was supposed to…

 

Well, he didn’t know, it turned out that reading about grail wars was one thing and actually participating in them was a whole different game altogether. He hadn’t thought that it’d be this difficult in the first few hours.

 

“Not that I have anything better to do, mind you,” her voice, cool, and clear rang out behind him, “But you seem to be taking your sweet time and I just wanted to know how long this was going to take.”

 

He sighed, his breath coming out in a white mist and matching the early morning mist on the castle grounds. He supposed there was nothing for it but to just call the golem preparation good and get right down to it.

 

They were set up, each inactive and hulking, in a vaguely zigzagging line. Even stationary their beady, yellow eyes glowed from behind steel masks that served as their faces. They would have that same empty expression while in motion, no hint of change, when their rocky fists slammed down on you. Golems had always unnerved him, far more than summoned spirits that Caules typically dealt with, and he supposed he was glad in that Roche at least had always had an interest in them.

 

“Calm down,” he said, exasperation leaking into his words as he stood from his crouching position and turned back towards his servant, “It’s all set up.”

 

She stood on a slight hill, on higher ground than him, staring down at him with that chronic unimpressed look that she’d had since he’d summoned her. Her arms were crossed, straining the sleeves of her dark mage’s robes outside her school uniform, and once again there wasn’t a single noble phantasm in sight.

 

“Fran,” he commanded, she gave no response, only raised her red eyebrows fractionally as if she couldn’t decide whether she was amused or annoyed. Caules withered with a sigh, trying again, “Frankenstein?”

 

At another, higher eyebrow raise he finally relented, “Lily?”

 

The girl smiled, a bright, beaming, cheerful thing that seemed like it should belong on Rider’s face rather than hers and asked, “Was that so hard now?”

 

It… Kind of was. He supposed the name was easy enough to remember but… Something about the idea of calling his servant something other than what he’d been prepared to unnerved him. Again, reinforcing that fear that something had gone wrong, that he really had messed it up somehow, and that he’d summoned someone who, well, wasn’t Frankenstein.

 

“Look, it’s…” he started only to stop and sigh again, “Do you not like Frankenstein?”

 

“It’s a little insulting,” she said with a somewhat nonplussed expression as if she wasn’t quite sure what to make of the question, “But mostly just inaccurate.”

 

Inaccurate? He felt that leaden suspicion in his stomach sink further. Except, no, the actual summoning process for the grail war was rather simple. Even mages who weren’t mages at all could manage it if they had a relic. The trick was to just make sure that you had the right relic matched to your own abilities, mana levels, and if you were really lucky your personality. In other words, it wasn’t the summoning where you’d screw up, but the grail war itself.

 

If it was that easy to summon the wrong person, then everyone and their brother would be using whatever relic to try and summon a far more powerful servant.

 

So, she was Frankenstein or else closely related to Frankenstein enough to be summoned by Caules’ relic. Which made her either Frankenstein’s monster, Doctor Victor Frankenstein, or maybe even some hapless girl sacrificed as Frankenstein’s bride.

 

And he was willing to go out on a limb that it wasn’t that last one.

 

He still just sighed, “Well, alright then, I guess I can call you whatever you think is best.”

 

“You’re a few lightbulbs short of a fully functioning chandelier, aren’t you?” she, Lily, asked. Caules stiffened and tried to brush off the sudden well of hurt that his own servant was so… judgmental. No one else’s servant was acting like this, not Rider who was taken straight to the dungeons by Celenike to do God only knew what, or Saber who had to put up with Uncle Gordes’ overinflated ego and insecurity.

 

Couldn’t she see that he was trying to be accommodating? Did she forget where her mana came from on this plane and that it was only with his help that anybody would be getting the grail at all?

 

He turned from her, sighing again, and focused back on the golems, “Now, listen up, Lily, unleash your noble phantasm!”

 

Nothing happened, he turned, looked back over his shoulder at her as she stared across at the golems with an almost confused look on her face.

 

Caules was going to go mad, he swore, he was going to lose his mind just trying to get Frankenstein to do anything, “Did you hear me, Lily?! Use your noble phantasm!”

 

“Oh, right,” she stopped, paused, glanced at him and asked, “Sorry, but, why are we doing this again? It just seems like a waste of resources.”

 

He let out a muffled, frustrated, cry and adjusted his glasses for what had to be the umpteenth time that morning, “I told you earlier, we have to see just what you’re able to do and what your limits are. It’ll help with our strategy when the red team finally all gets to Romania and starts doing something.”

 

She blinked once, almost like an owl, then said without any kind of doubt or hesitation, “I have no limits.”

 

“Everyone has limits,” he retorted, “Berserkers, especially, and don’t argue with me you know it too.”

 

“I’m not berserkers,” she parroted, lips twisting into a rather wry and amused smile that while oddly charming in its own way, he did not appreciate being used in this context.

 

“Yes, you are,” he said, crossing his arms and deciding to just come out with the truth no matter how tactless and insulting it was, “You’re not even the strongest of them, you only have a D-rank noble phantasm!”

 

She laughed, a pure, amused, laugh that she couldn’t even seem to contain as she threw her head back, “They have ranks now?”

 

Then, looking back at him and smiling, placing her hands on her hips she said, “Alright then, with that winning argument I suppose I have no choice.”

 

She looked out at the golems again, this time with a cold determination in her eyes that reeked of something beyond mage craft and even humanity. Then, with her just staring at them, with no noble phantasm revealed and no hand movements at all each golem crumbled into a pile of dust.

 

He felt his jaw open then close…

 

That was a D-rank noble phantasm? It was… It felt too anticlimactic, like she’d just been humoring him and had far more up her sleeve. Looking at her she didn’t even seem slightly winded. Like destroying Roche’s golems had been nothing to her.

 

Except, according to Doctor Frankenstein’s blueprints, an attack like that was about the most his monster would ever be able to accomplish. More, if she kept using attacks at maximum strength, her body would all too quickly fall apart.

 

He moved towards the ruble, sticking his hand into the remains and sifting through the course pebbles and sand. That would… Well, it’d certainly destroy most servants if they met it head on, whatever that was, if she could last long enough in the war.

 

He stood, brushing off his hands, “Lily, don’t ever use that at full power again, alright? You’ll just destroy yourself.”  


She considered him, green eyes shuddered and unreadable, and noted, “I can’t tell if you’re being philosophic or simply ignorant.”

 

“I’m serious—” he started, but once again she didn’t even let him finish, simply shoved her hands into her pockets and stared out past him into the rolling hills and forests surrounding the castle.

 

“I am a destroyer of worlds, Caules Forvedge Yggdmillennia,” she said, and it was with a quiet intensity that had a shiver crawling up his spine, “If I am going to destroy myself, then a few golems here and there don’t make a difference. The path to damnation is littered with far more than the corpses of golems.”

 

He took a breath, in and out, trying to tell himself that he could do this and connect with her and be a competent master. More, that he wouldn’t… That he wouldn’t let her destroy herself, even if she seemed to insist on it or see it as inevitable, “Actually, I forbid you from using it at full power, understand?”

 

Her eyes drifted to his hand, to the command seals printed on the back of them, and he rushed to cover them almost guiltily. Still, she had a silent point, he wasn’t going to waste a command seal on something like this. All he could really do was ask and hope…

 

However, she just smiled, a strange almost nostalgic thing, “You know, if my last master had said that, then things might not have gone so poorly.”

 

“Your last master?” his eyes widened as he remembered what she’d offhandedly said the night before, “You were in a grail war before, weren’t you?”

 

“Well, not here,” she said, rubbing the back of her head and rambling off an explanation, “At least I don’t think, given that no one’s been shouting my name from the rooftops, even when they all knew exactly who I was in Japan, and the next grail war wasn’t supposed to be until, well…”

 

He… Supposed it was possible, that a servant could be summoned in one grail war then another. It was rare though, it meant that not only was their relic still around and in use among mages decades later, it also meant that the servant themselves still answered the call of the grail. Even after everything that had happened to her, after she’d undoubtedly failed last time, she still had some great overpowering wish that drove her back into another grail war.

 

Suddenly, he thought, her jadedness and distrust made an eerie amount of sense. Most masters… Most grail wars didn’t go well, for master or servant, in obtaining the greater grail in the last war Darnic had been very unusual, and even then Caules had never closely inquired after the fate of his servant during that war.

 

That, and the use of the grail necessitated the sacrifice of all the servants, which meant that either she had been killed in battle, her master had perished, or her master had reached that last stage of the war and…

 

Caules swallowed, sealed hand twitching, and suddenly all too aware of how much more powerful a servant was than their master, “I… What exactly is it that you want from the grail, Lily?”

 

What would bring someone back into a war, into a war where they knew their master was eventually going to betray them?

 

She turned from him, grinning once again as if she didn’t have a care in the world, “Now, now, Caules, that’s for me to know and you to figure out for yourself.”

 

Then she was off, darting back up the hill and towards the castle, leaving Caules staring after her, utterly unsure of what to make of his own servant as well as her own mysterious wish.

 

* * *

 

“Oh, wow, these clothes feel amazing!” Mordred grinned down at himself and his newly purchased modern wear, “Thank you, master!”

 

His master, Kairi Sisigou, said nothing to this and didn’t even look at him, but Mordred had figured out in the day they’d been together that this was just the way he was. Just as his gruff, “Don’t worry about it, it was a necessary expense,” was probably the best Mordred was going to get out of the man.

 

Mordred just grinned, looking down at the blue jean shorts, the red jacket, and the white cropped tunic with delight. He felt, God he didn’t even know, like he’d been born in the wrong place and the wrong time.

 

Of course, he’d always felt like that, but in this modern world he had the sneaking suspicion that he wouldn’t have seemed so out of place or at least felt it all the damn time. Here, for one, he didn’t have to dress in a manner that his father approved of, didn’t have to wear bulky layers for anything other than battle.

 

Or maybe it was the sneaking suspicion that Mordred had gotten damn lucky with this summoning thing. Now, Mordred wasn’t one to take things as they were, to just assume everything based on how it first looked, but so far it was looking pretty good. The man had only once mentioned Mordred’s father, only once dared to call Mordred a woman, had seemed perfectly respectful of Mordred’s position and goal, had proved himself to not be a complete idiot in the church, and without any fuss had bought Mordred some new threads.

 

Sure, he was a necromancer and a mage, something which chafed at Mordred and remined him all too much of his mother or else that bastard Merlin, but he supposed that when you were in a grail war, mages were unavoidable. Even though Sisigou reeked of death and insisted on camping in a crypt, the guy wasn’t too bad and at least didn’t seem hopelessly evil.

 

Now, if the son of a bitch decided to stab Mordred in the back then Mordred was goddamn ready. Mordred had rebelled against his own father, a far worthier man and master than Sisigou could ever hope to be, but until then Mordred was willing to believe that this would all work out.

 

Mordred then sighed, folded his hands behind his head, continued to look about the darkened empty streets of Trifas, and was about to note that it was about damn time for the enemy to attack them when movement caught his eye from a nearby alleyway.

 

It was a man, ordinary looking enough Mordred supposed, except for the fact that he might be the prettiest man Mordred had ever seen. He was unusually tall, dark haired, pale, with striking light blue eyes, dressed in a nondescript dark suit from this modern age. Still, he looked like he could just be some ordinary guy out for a night on the town.

 

Except, no, there was something more than that catching Mordred’s eye, something insisting he take a second look and really see this man for what he was. The man, in turn, stopped dead in his tracks to look at Mordred, eyes widening in what looked like recognition.

 

Mordred felt his eyes narrow, eyes racing through the names and faces of everyone he knew, everyone who could recognize him dressed like this and without Clarent Blood Arthur in hand. He was too dark, too scrawny, and too pretty to be Lancelot. He wasn’t Percival, Gallahad, or any other of his father’s lackies, and as far as Mordred could tell he wasn’t any of Mordred’s own lackies either.

 

He… might be Merlin disguised, except Merlin had always been cleverer and subtler than this, would have made himself plainer to deflect attention, and Mordred’s mother he would know anywhere by smell alone.

 

The man started walking again, face blank and that spark of recognition gone with Mordred’s inaction, and stepped out of the alleyway and turned left to walk in the opposite direction of Mordred and his master.

 

“Hey!” Mordred shouted, turning to face the man, but he just kept walking, “Hey, you, where do you think you’re going, asshole?!”

 

The man stopped, turned, and looking at Mordred and Sisigou let out a long-suffering sigh before asking, entirely too politely, “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

 

“I don’t know,” Mordred asked, glaring and not willing to put up with that nonrecognition bullshit, “Do you?”

 

The man opened his mouth to say something but then an odd smile touched his lips and he instead pointed over Mordred’s shoulders, “Well, if I was you, I’d be more concerned with that.”

 

Mordred wheeled around to see a row of homunculi in white flanked by stone golems. He cursed, running a hand through his hair, “Motherfucker.”

 

You spend all day complaining about the lack of enemies and fighting and then they take the worst opportunity to get their asses in gear and show up. Sure enough, glancing briefly behind her soldier mysterious asshole in black had already made his cowardly exit, leaving the black faction goons to Mordred and his master.

 

His master who must have been using himself as a decoy this whole damn time and clearly had balls of steel. Mordred slapped him on the back in appreciation even as he loaded his gun, “Okay, I get it now, I thought I was a decoy, but you were one too! Master, you might just be insane, I like it.”

 

“You take the golems, I’ll focus on getting rid of the homunculi,” his master said, business as goddamn usual, and then it was off to the races with Mordred’s zapping over his clothing, the sword in hand, and the golems getting pulverized one by one into pebbles.

 

And, sure enough, Sisigou’s homunculi opponents started dropping like flies until there wasn’t one left standing. Which, another point to him, not only was Mordred’s master not an idiot but he was damn good at what he did.

 

Then it was done, and Mordred was about to brag and remark as much about their mighty fine teamwork when he was interrupted by slow clapping.

 

“Oh, you’ve got to be goddamn kidding me,” Mordred spat, because up there on the roof of the closest building, long dark coat flapping in the wind was Mr. Pretty standing there dramatically and smiling down at them with an, “I am so pleased and you have passed my secret test” expression.

 

“Hey, you a black servant?” Mordred asked, as he was getting a pretty good idea that the guy was some kind of servant, even if he oddly enough wasn’t screaming it like you could normally expect.

 

The man just continued to smile, “Not as such.”

 

Sisigou quietly cocked his gun and pointed it at the man while Mordred just scoffed, “Well, that’s a bullshit answer.”

 

Still, Mordred was willing to buy it, if only because there was asshole and then there was an asshole who wasted his own resources in a fight he’d been present for the whole time. Either he was a lazy coward and hardly fitting the title of hero, which meant it’d probably be difficult to get him to join a grail war, he had some agenda that didn’t align with his masters, or some other third convoluted option that Mordred couldn’t care less about.

 

“I’m assuming you’re Saber of red,” he said instead.

 

“What gave that away?” Mordred asked, hand still clenching the sword and preparing for battle at any moment, except she doubted this was prelude to attack. He’d had too many opportunities while the pair was separated and fighting, striking them like this would be suicide.

 

For a moment he said nothing, just looked down at Mordred with a weirdly assessing look, not the kind of look of trying to figure out who Mordred was or what class he was but instead like he knew Mordred already or something about him and was trying to figure out something deeper. Mordred didn’t like it.

 

“Are you going to get to the point sometime today?!” Mordred asked and just as he did the man tossed down a single piece of paper, a photograph. Mordred picked it up, blinked, and found himself looking at the photograph of a young girl.

 

She was beautiful, Mordred thought, if you tilted your head at the right angle. It wasn’t Guinevere’s type of beauty but closer to the beauty of Excalibur or what Mordred had always imagined the Lady of the Lake looked like. Something raw and alien and filled with ancient fairy magic that had departed this modern world.

 

Her hair was a bright, vibrant, red that you saw in sunrises or early sunsets, thick and curling about her face and shoulders. Her skin the same pale pallor of the man himself, that kind of enviable pale that many noblewomen in Camelot had sought. Her green eyes, Mordred thought with a growing sense of something, looked like Mordred’s, like his father’s.

 

“I’m looking for a girl,” the man explained as Mordred looked back up, “She’s undoubtedly a servant, it would be nice to know if she was red.”

 

“Huh?” Mordred asked as that… Honestly, hadn’t been what he was expecting. He supposed it didn’t really matter, Mordred had no clue, Sisigou and he had split before he had a chance to see any of them besides that Semiramis lady. Still, there was a more important question to ask, “Why do you expect me to tell you?”

 

For a moment the man considered Mordred again, assessed him rather, and seemed to read whatever answer he needed from Mordred. Mordred stiffened as the man smiled, summoned the photograph back into his head (likely a mage then, now that Mordred thought about it the guy reeked of magic), “You look like your father.”

 

And then with a great crack he was gone, vanished, just before Mordred brought down his sword overhead and demolished the building where the guy had standing. Mordred breathed heavily, eyes wide and distant as images of his father flashed before his eyes.

 

Sisigou’s voice, calm and cool, interrupted the montage of wretched memories, “Well, I’m going to go on a limb and say he’s someone’s servant.”

 

“Yeah,” Mordred agreed bitterly, pulling his sword out of the cobblestones, “It’s too bad I let him talk so damn much before he could run off, coward.”

 

It had almost been weird, he thought, in retrospect. Maybe it was a part of the guy’s noble phantasm, that Mordred had had to sit there and listen and wait for him to finish or something…

 

“No,” Sisigou mused as he turned back from where they came, picking up some purple stone that had come from the golem, “He would have just run sooner then, I think we got something out of him.”

 

“We did?” Mordred asked, somewhat stunned as he began to walk with Sisigou back the way they came and out of the city.

 

“Well,” Sisigou said with a shrug, “He knew your father.”

 

“Yeah,” Mordred agreed, now thinking hard, thinking about names and faces from so long ago, “He knew my father.”

 

Except he had handed that to them, that was free information, which meant that it would get them nowhere. Whoever this was, Mordred was almost certain that he hadn’t been in Arthur’s court or round table. No, he was from somewhere else, somewhere even Mordred couldn’t easily guess…

 

Mordred put it out of his head, instead grinning and looking up at Sisigou, ready to ask about what he thought of the knight’s skill with the blade and the fact that Mordred, out of every knight in the round table, had been the only one to ever surpass his father.

 

* * *

 

And on the back of a truck, cloaked in the body of an ordinary high-school girl, Jeanne d’Arc, saint and Ruler of this holy grail war, rode to Trifas with the certain knowledge that some poison had seeped into the very roots of the war before it could truly begin.


	3. Chapter 3

The world had changed and yet, in some ways she decided, not at all.

 

Her trek to Trifas was oddly reminiscent of her journey from her small home in Domrémy to the king’s court all those centuries ago.

 

Then she had only been sixteen, had petitioned her relative Durand Lassois to take her to the town Vaucouleurs where in turn she had tried and failed to petition the garrison commander for an armed escort to the royal court at Chinon. She had then returned the following winter, and after prophesying the military reversal at the Battle of Rouvray, finally convinced the garrison commander Baudricourt to escort her to Chinon and the dauphin.  

 

That had taken much longer, she had been seventeen by the time she finally had her meeting with the dauphin in Chinon, and much of it had been on horseback disguised in the armor of a man. However, there was that same divine certainty, then guided by Archangel Michael, Saint Margaret, and Saint Catherine of Alexandria and this time by the Holy Grail. Similarly, there was that thought in her head that just as her family, the commanders, and even the beleaguered dauphin not yet king had not understood at first then, no one would understand now.

 

A young high school girl did not travel alone in the back of a pickup truck to Romania, with only a small leather suitcase beside her, to act as Ruler and arbiter in the war for the Holy Grail. A young, illiterate, peasant girl did not travel to the court of the king to drive out the English by the will of God.

 

It was dark out, the wind whipping through her hair, and as she stared out at the road disappearing at an impossible rate behind her she allowed her mind to wander to the differences of this day and age.

 

She had received her first vision at the age of thirteen, instructing her to aid her king and countrymen and drive out the English, and it had been so beautiful she had been left crying in her garden.

 

The Holy Grail… It was a far subtler thing, inserting knowledge of the modern world, of legends and ages both before and after her death that she simply had not known during her lifetime, into her mind along with the role she herself was to play. It also, she thought, left her the distinct impression that something had gone wrong even before her arrival.

 

She looked at her hands, pale and so similar to how her own had looked centuries ago. However, they lacked the callous of holding the banner, the sword when it could not be helped, or even the plow before she had left for Chinon. These were the hands of an ordinary girl, a young devout Catholic, who had answered Jeanne’s cry from beyond the gates of heaven to allow possession of her body.

 

Jeanne should not have had to stoop to this, should have had the power and ability to manifest with her own mana in Romania itself, something had gone wrong.

 

A bright flare of mana distracted her, she looked to her right, out towards the darkened countryside off the highway where something not entirely human, not entirely mortal, waited.

 

Golden light glimmered next to her, small and soft and speaking of something otherworldly and beyond the comprehension of most, and with wide eyed realization Jeanne quickly realized she was about to be greeted by a servant of the war.

 

She leaned forward over the truck, moved her head towards the window, and spoke to the kindly man who had offered her a ride to Trifas from where she had been walking down the highway from the bus station some hours ago, “Please turn back, it is extremely dangerous here.”

 

The man was kind and honorable, Jeanne had known as much when she had accepted his offer to drive her, but he could not stay here, and she commanded him as much. Under the force of her will he stopped the car, allowed her to disembark from the back with her suitcase, and then slowly drove away with his eyes no doubt lingering on the lonely girl in the Catholic schoolgirl’s uniform left on a highway in Romania.

 

She doubted, she thought as her eyes lifted to the green highway sign, that he had caught sight of the golden man peering down at her with a rather cruel and amused smile. He glowed in the way that the Archangel Michael had in her visions, as if even in darkness sunlight would always seep through his skin, however unlike Michael his eyes were not made of light but instead a dark glowing red like that of a demon.

 

This was a man not entirely of this world, Jeanne thought as she stared up at him in the body of a mortal schoolgirl.

 

“Archer of red,” she marked him, “Gilgamesh, king of Babylon and Uruk, son of the goddess Ninsun and root of all Western epics.”

 

He did not seem impressed as he looked down upon her, in fact, he seemed rather put out, “And you are not my wife, and thus of little consequence to me.”

 

He paused then, eyes roving up and down her body in a manner that was most unnerving though, oddly enough particularly given this man’s legend, not lecherous. He then concluded rather incredulously, “Although, you are the second and only person I know who considers it acceptable to come to the front dressed as a schoolgirl.”

 

Jeanne ignored the barb, letting go of her suitcase and facing him fully, eyes narrowing as she took in the high ground he had taken for himself (ideal positioning for an archer), “If I am such little consequence, king of heroes, then why have you come to greet me?”

 

She did not suspect he meant to attack her, he would have done so already, and if he considered her truly to be beneath his notice he would have already left or else ground her out beneath his heel. This was a man without honor or patience, if he still lingered, then there was a reason for it.

 

Whatever that reason was though had to wait as his own eyes narrowed, moved behind her, and he growled out, “Karna, you worthless dog.”

 

That was the only warning she would receive as, behind her, there was a flash of sunlight and fire in the form of another pale man who was barely a man at all. Then it was smoke and dust and Jeanne using her mana to transform into the armor she had not worn in war but the armor that would have represented her had she been able to don it.

 

And the great banner, once again, was held in her hands as other men held swords.

 

“And Lancer of red,” Jeanne noted, taking in his white hair, his pale painted face, and the wings of red shadow and gold attached to him as he stalked towards her, “Son of Surya the sun god, Karna.”

 

Two demigods, she thought somewhat somewhat wryly and bitterly, for the price of one. This, she thought, was both an unexpected fight and an unwanted one. She was not certain she could directly face one of them, let alone both.

 

“Do not count me in league with that soulless cur and automaton,” Gilgamesh said with an insulted sniff, unmoving from his perch on the highway sign.

 

Both Jeanne and Karna turned at that, looked up towards him in equal bafflement, or in Karna’s case an added insulted and truly irate look, “Is it not soulless and doglike to disregard the will of your master?”

 

Gilgamesh, however, almost seemed amused by this question, “My master no longer has a will, and neither does yours. You, I’m afraid, blindly serve the will of the lesser Kotomine, and I simply shall not stoop to that.”

 

He did not explain this, to either Jeanne or the now stricken and wrathful looking Karna, but instead grinned down at them, “In fact, I do believe I shall do more than simply not stoop to that. In the last war I was not nearly thorn enough in the side of my cur master Tokiomi Tosaka, I shall, I believe, be the thorn in the side of Shirou Kotomine. If you mean to destroy the girl then I am afraid she must live.”

 

Gilgamesh’s attention then moved to her, his smile becoming oddly soft, in a manner that both suited him and did not suit him in the slightest, “Besides, I have a fondness for overpowered schoolgirls.”

 

Jeanne watched, drawing in her breath, as the great golden gates of Babylon opened. Where once there was darkness and the highway sign gold light poured forth. From the light the tips of thousands upon thousands of blades could be seen, each a work of art to rival her own Pucelle strapped even now to her waist. Each, she thought with growing awe and a touch of dread, a noble phantasm.

 

Then, just as swiftly, it was raining down swords and Jeanne was darting out of the way and leaving the two servants of red to face one another. Gold met red, light and fire intermingled, and Jeanne stared with a grim expression as she tried to put together what this meant even as the pair swiftly destroyed the road and landscape surrounding them.

 

The red team was fracturing, leadership according to Gilgamesh consolidated by a man named Shirou Kotomine, one to whom Gilgamesh held no loyalty but one who apparently had earned enough respect for Karna to carry out this strange task, this subverting of the rules of the Holy Grail war. Then again, Gilgamesh, it seemed, held no loyalty to his comrades in general and, by the look on his face, would thwart their plans if only that their misfortune brought him joy.

 

Except, even in that case, his greatest chance of gaining the grail would be to work amongst his team for now. Or, at the very least, to leave them be. For him to abandon them so early, so callously meant…

 

“Gilgamesh does not desire the Holy Grail,” Jeanne concluded to herself.

 

Karna, it seemed however, had not yet realized this. He gritted his teeth and spat towards the earth, glowing red in the dark from his own power as his golden lance clashed with Gilgamesh’s many blades, “You are truly a snake of a king, to betray your own comrades and master with the slightest of causes—”

 

“Comrades?” Gilagamesh asked, still unmoved from his purchase upon the highway sign, having simply stepped out of the way when a ball of flame had engulfed the green sign and left nothing but the bare steel bones.

 

“You truly believe that you, the woman king assassin, the Hellenist upstart, the writer, and the barbarian slave are worthy of being called my comrades? I do not remember having selected you as brothers in arms, I do not even remember giving you my approval,” Gilgamesh’s fine, pale, features then twisted into a sneer as he said, “Even the swordsman and her rebel without a cause master, recognized your unworthiness.”

 

Jeanne did not know if it was his intention to goad the man into recklessness or if it was simply Gilgamesh’s nature, however, if it was a technique it was working well. Lancer was a worthy opponent, a son of a god as Gilgamesh himself was, and were he more rational perhaps would have more easily been able to force Gilgamesh from his higher ground.

 

As it was Gilgamesh moved from street sign to street lamp, apparently unwilling to engage in hand to hand combat, always at enough of a distance that his swords could rain down before Karna could even think of reaching him.

 

“I will, however, acknowledge your abilities,” Gilgamesh said as he surveyed the wreckage of flame, his swords impaled in the earth in a circle about Karna who now wiped blood from his eye, “Most, against even my lesser treasures, would have been dead by now. You are a worthier mongrel than most, even if you insist on playing the fool.”

 

“Though perhaps,” Gilgamesh added with a pensive look, “Not worthy of Ea yet.”

 

Karna said nothing to this, merely drew forth his lance, and finally after a long pause of silence he said, “You truly mean then to bear your swords towards me, your fellow servant of red, in direct disregard of our master’s collective intent.”

 

“I have meant nothing less,” Gilgamesh retorted with a sort of unimpressed impatience, as if Karna was now merely wasting his time.

 

Jeanne turned, then, noted the appearance of an overweight middle-aged man in white, sprinting along the roadside out of breath towards them, and beside him a taller, muscular, sword bearing servant. All too likely, Saber of black, Siegfried of the Netherlands.

 

Siegfried positioned himself in front of her, drawing forth his great blade and wielding it towards both Karna and Gilgamesh. Likely unsure which was his enemy, or, perhaps, which was the enemy he should be warier towards.

 

Jeanne herself did not know the answer to that question.

 

The master loudly addressed her, panting as he arrived at her side, “That was a close one, Ruler. I have come here to welcome you.”

 

He was a rather pitiful thing, Jeanne thought, not a man whose constitution would have suited warfare. Still, he panted, drew himself up to his full height (not much taller than hers) and introduced himself, “I am Gordes Musik Yggdmillennia, master of black Saber, and it is a pleasure to meet you.”

 

He then turned towards the red team pair, “Now, Lancer and Archer of Red, we arrived just in time to witness your attempt to murder Ruler! Plotting to eliminate the arbitrator of the Holy Grail War is in direct violation of the rules!”

 

Neither Gilgamesh nor Karna seemed suitably impressed by this damning statement. Karna merely stating, “I will not deny it.”

 

“Silence!” Gordes commanded, Jeanne turning her face from him to instead survey the battlefield once again, “Prepare to accept your sentence, which will be swiftly delivered by—”

 

Gilgamesh it appeared, had had enough as he said with a particularly long-suffering sigh, “I realize, mongrel, that you are enamored by the sound of your own voice but those of us who are not quite so lowly find it almost embarrassing by association.”

 

“Now,” he added, “The only reason you continue to stand upon this earth on your unworthy quivering legs is that you are in possession of knowledge I seek.”

 

Golden light appeared in Gilgamesh’s hand, Karna bracing himself for another sword from the heavens while Siegfried did the same, but all that appeared between the man’s golden gauntlets was a single photograph. He tossed it down to the earth where it fluttered in the breeze and, eventually, landed in Jeanne’s outstretched hand.

 

It was, she thought somewhat dumbly, a picture of a modern schoolgirl. There was a certain shroud of normalcy about her, in her uniform of a dark cloak thrown over a button up shirt and skirt. However, this was juxtaposed by finer details of the girl herself, her bright red hair, her pale skin, but more importantly her almost alarming green eyes. She looked almost as out of place, Jeanne thought, as she herself did in a schoolgirl’s costume.

 

“I seek a woman,” Gilgamesh explained, “I presume as she is not among the red then she must be among the black. If you wish to tread upon this earth for another miserable sentence you will tell me her prescribed class in this war and her unworthy master.”

 

Gordes sucked in an unwilling breath of recognition, eyes almost bugging out of his skull, then he stared across at Gilgamesh, “How dare you! Saber and Ruler will strike you down from where you stand and—”

 

“I shall do no such thing,” Jeanne interjected, eyes still lingering on the photograph of the girl, wondering how a warrior of five-thousand years ago would come by such a thing, “I am an arbitrator, not a servant, I serve neither black nor red and your battles shall remain your own.”

 

Gilgamesh smirked in response, seeming to approve of Jeanne’s stoic neutrality in the face of Gordes’ growing desperation. Jeanne was not sure she wanted such a thing as Gilgamesh of Babylon’s approval.

 

Gordes turned to her, but before he could get a word in Siegfriend was swinging himself in front of the man to block a sword aimed straight for the man’s heart. Gordes shuddered, looked down at the blade now stuck in the asphalt, littered there among the hundreds of others.

 

He looked, with sweat pouring down his face, as if he only just now realized he may die in this war. Jeanne looked past him to the east where the sun was now beginning to peak over the mountains.

 

“You,” Gordes said, now glaring at the golden king, “You would dare throw your sword at me?! Your master is a coward, a Mage’s Association dog, and a—”

 

“On that,” Gilgamesh scoffed, if possible looking even more unimpressed than before, “I am afraid we are in agreement.”

 

Karna’s eyes, too drifted towards the sun. He stared at it for a moment, golden light painting his face, before turning back to his audience, “Between you and the traitor, we will be clashing swords until sunrise.”

 

“A pity,” he said as his eyes drifted to the black swordsman, “You have eyes such that you would be a worthy opponent. I look forward to our fight, Saber.”

 

He turned his attention to Gilgamesh, “As for you, I suspect you shall be disposed of shortly, by black or by red. I cannot say I look forward to disposing of you.”

 

And then the man was gone, fading into blue light even as the sun rose above the mountains and Jeanne darted forward, “Wait, Lancer of red, do not leave!”

 

But he was gone, Jeanne’s unasked questions left unanswered, leaving her, Gilgamesh, Siegfried, and Gordes behind.

 

“Mage,” Gilgamesh said with an almost resigned sigh, glaring down at Gordes as he did so, “You are so pitiful you are not even worthy of a death by my sword, do not try my patience and linger. In return for your life I ask but a small favor.”

 

Gordes asked, mouth falling open into a gape, “A favor?!”

 

“Yes, you unworthy dog, a favor,” Gilgamesh said, “When you see the girl, tell her that Gilgamesh waits for her in Trifas.”

 

“Why would I ever—” Gordes stopped as seven swords appeared out of the gates only to land in a circle around him, each cutting into the fabric of his suit and exposing pale flesh to the sunrise.

 

“Do not presume, mongrel, to try my patience,” Gilgamesh said slowly, looking every inch the king seated upon his throne of the lightpole. Gordes shook and sweated, staying rooted in place with fear and determination, and it was his own servant who looked back towards him and quietly said, “Master, I believe we should retreat for now.”

 

“Retreat?!” Gordes cried, “Are you saying that—”

 

“I am saying, Master, that he is powerful and it would be… unwise even with the blood of Fafnir to take him on with a single blade.”

 

Gordes gritted his teeth in rage but seemed to realize he had little choice, especially as the shadow of more blades appeared out of the gates of Babylon. He turned then, in humiliation and defeat, reaching a hand out towards Jeanne as he did so, “Come with us, Ruler, to Millennia Citadel. It is the best place to observe the war.”

 

Jeanne spared him a glance before her eyes, almost against her will, moved past him to Gilgamesh once again, “No, I must remain impartial and I have all the skills I need to observe Trifas in its entirety.”

 

“Mage,” Gilgamesh asked, “Are you truly so eager to die?”

 

The man quivered, looked down towards the earth, then turned on his heel towards a black car with a homunculus driver, “Saber, let’s go.”

 

Saber dematerialized in green light, Gordes entered the car, and just like that only Gilgamesh and Jeanne remained.

 

Jeanne stood, holding her flag and waiting for the man to make a move, but he seemed content to linger and watch. Rather like some overgrown and ostentatious bird of prey, like the crows that had waited eagerly in the main square of Rouen for the execution.

 

She moved forward, once again consumed with the thought that something was different about this grail war and that everything must wait until she arrived in Trifas. However, on stepping onto the road again, maneuvering around the swords, she found herself staring down at her destroyed suitcase and torn, borrowed, garments.

 

“You and Lily truly do share alarmingly similar taste,” a voice sounded next to her ear, Jeanne whirled to find Gilgamesh standing on even ground with her, lingering beside her shoulder and staring down at Latecia’s clothing in unguarded interest.

 

“Archer of red!”

 

“I have decided,” he said, looking across at her, “That you are the least offensive of my current compatriots.”

 

Jeanne could not help but frown, stare at him, and wonder if she had ever met a man so… presumptuous. Finally, she stated the simple truth, “I cannot decide, Archer, if that was a compliment or an insult.”

 

“In your case a compliment,” the man said, again oddly pleased by Jeanne’s response, “I shall, I think, be your guide in this war. At least, until my wife decides to make her grand entrance.”

 

“I do not need a guide. Certainly not a servant in the war itself,” Jeanne said but the man only seemed amused by this

 

“Oh, I think you do,” the man disagreed with a laugh, “Have you not already faced threats of assassination before even entering Trifas? Besides, though I may have been forced to take up their banner I’d hardly call myself red.”

 

Jeanne ignored this, moved to pick up her scattered clothing, interrupted when out of a great golden portal an ornate gilded case tumbled out. The kind of case, she thought, that would have been too ornate and expensive even for the king of France.

 

She turned back to him, glaring, but decided that there was nothing for it and with a nod accepted his loaned case and folded the undamaged clothing inside of it. Although, she thought with a grimace, few of the outfits had survived the battle.

 

“All the same, I am impartial and—”

 

“Do not condemn me to their company,” he said, looking as if this was the last thing any sane man would wish upon him, “It is either I accompany you or find the nearest bar with drink that is not swill.”

 

Closing the lid on the case and strapping it across her back, transforming back into the form of the schoolgirl as she did so, she noted with resignation, “I suppose I cannot force you to leave.”

 

That was the truth of it, if he did not mean to fight then she would not hold her banner against him, and if he would not leave of her own free will then she was not sure she had the power to force him. Gilgamesh, it seemed, would do as he pleased and for whatever ineffable reason it pleased him to follow her.

 

He walked beside her, transforming into his own modern wear, pouring himself a glass of red wine and offering her another as they slowly made their way on foot to Trifas. Jeanne, staring at the red depths, declined.

 

Gilgamesh simply placed the golden goblet back into a golden portal, appearing and disappearing beneath his fingertips. Then, as he sipped at his wine, he asked, “So, Ruler, what exactly are you? A knight? A king?”

 

“Neither,” Jeanne said, staring past him and towards the horizon, where Trifas itself was not yet in sight, “I was…”

 

A peasant, a prophet, a saint, a holy maiden, a witch… She had been called each in turn and yet she had rarely paused to consider her state in the world even when put on trial for it. She had responded, indeed, in the trial at Rouen when they asked her for her position in God’s infinite grace, “If am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.”

 

No man, prophet or not, could truly know his place in God’s tapestry. She still believed that, perhaps now more than ever.

 

“It’s just as well,” Gilgamesh said, his smile only seeming to grow fonder, “There are, I think, too many knights and far too many false kings in this world.”

 

She considered that in silence, not quite sure what he meant by it, particularly what he meant in saying it to her who had been tasked by God to place the French king upon the throne. However, soon her mind wandered instead to her current war and current task inside of it.

 

“Gilgamesh,” she said, forsaking his role of Archer instead for his true name as he seemed so set on shirking the responsibilities of his class, “You said that your master, that Karna’s master, lacked will. That you instead reported to a man by the name of Shirou Kotomine, what did you mean by that?”

 

“Ah,” Gilgamesh said, expression darkening with irritation, “I merely meant that I suspect my master, Karna’s master, all masters of red save Shirou Kotomine are… Incapacitated.”

 

“Incapacitated?” she asked, eyes widening, and Gilgamesh smirked in response.

 

“Not dead,” Gilgamesh said, “Or else I and the others would not be here. However, the mongrel has been notably absent for weeks now with the strangest of orders to take all future orders from the priest Kotomine.”

 

“You mean to say that you believe this Shirou Kotomine somehow controls your own master along with every other master of red,” Jeanne concluded for him.

 

“That or the man has simply no will or agenda of his own,” Gilgamesh agreed, “Which, as a mage, is hardly believable.”

 

Neither Gilgamesh nor Karna’s master had showed any hint of appearance in the battle, even when Gilgamesh turned against his own team. Any sane master would have bound him via a command seal long ago, to never lay a finger upon his teammates until after red had won the greater grail. Yet he had not even been forced to retreat.

 

Even Karna, it seemed, had chosen to retreat rather than been forced into the action by a command seal.

 

It could have been a show, she supposed, but to what end? Jeanne would not show favoritism for this, was hardly endeared to Gilgamesh of Babylon, and mostly tolerated his presence because she could not conceive of a way to safely and impartially get rid of him. No, this and the photograph of the girl still in her hand reeked of Gilgamesh having some other, strange, agenda of his own that had nothing to do with the Holy Grail.

 

There was something rotting at the roots of this grail war, something that went by the name of Shirou Kotomine and took the guise of masters of red who were not masters at all, something that feared her gaze upon it to the point of eliminating her before she could set foot in Trifas.

 

And all she could think, as they walked as a pair into the sunrise and Trifas beyond it, was that something had already come undone.

 

* * *

 

Caules couldn’t really explain to himself why he was looking for Berserker, searching not just the castle but the gardens as well, except that overnight and then in the morning he’d felt the pressing need to…

 

He didn’t really know, understand her he supposed.

 

She was just nothing like what he’d expected, of a Berserker or especially of Frankenstein’s monster.

 

Finally, in the early morning, he found her sitting in the garden on a bench, staring out over the rolling hills and out towards the forest. She looked…

 

Her hair was curling in the breeze, lifting this way and that, her eyes deep and green as she looked out past the horizon. She looked so far away and timeless, gold light falling on her cheeks and making them almost glow.

 

She looked, he thought with a growing blush and sense of awkwardness, beautiful.

 

“Hey,” his voice cracked, sounded awkward and forced even to his own ears, and he felt his smile grow strained as she turned her head to look at him. He cleared his throat, continuing as he walked towards her, “You know…”

 

He trailed off as her expression turned to a familiar one of complete disinterest, only highlighted as she said, “Well, if it isn’t Caules.”

 

“Yeah,” he said rather dumbly, “It’s me.”

 

He then stopped, standing just in front of the bench and trying to search for words to say. Finally, he sheepishly admitted, “I… I was looking for you all over the place. Where have you—”

 

“I’ve been looking for the greater grail,” she answered calmly, without even letting him finish his sentence.

 

He felt himself pale, eyes pop open, and he said, “Oh, no, Lily you can’t do that.”

 

Even Caules did not know where the greater grail was kept beneath the castle. That was… Darnic, by all rights, was not a terrible patriarch. He had allowed people like Caules to become mages, after all, had developed and honed their skills but there were lines you could not cross with him. You did not go looking for the greater grail.

 

“Too late,” she said, expression darkening, “I found it.”

 

“You found it?!” he cried out, looking around and wondering if anyone heard. Because that would be the end of her, it didn’t matter if she was a servant, she would be dead if Darnic or even his sister found out.

 

And he wasn’t sure why it was but… But he really didn’t want her dead.

 

“It’s changed,” she said, now looking past him and to the horizon once again, “From the last time… But I still can’t touch it!”

 

She pounded her fist against the bench, her voice wrenching out of her throat, sounding truly pained by this admission. Almost hopeless, even.

 

“Well,” Caules stopped, paused, wondered how to confess this, “That’s why we’re fighting the war, remember. Sure, we have the greater grail, but it can’t be used unless…”

 

He paused, swallowed, felt himself pale and sweat drip down his face, “Unless certain conditions are met.”

 

The grail war, the sacrifice of the heroes, the sacrifice of heroes like Berserker. Caules glanced down at his hand again, at the command seals, and knew that one of them would be preserved for Berserker’s suicide at his prompting.

 

Suddenly, he didn’t want to think about that anymore.

 

He glanced at her, at her dejected expression, and said, “Listen to me, Lily, you can’t tell anyone you know where it is. You can’t ever go looking for it again without me. Do you understand?”

 

“Why not?” she asked instead.

 

“Darnic will… Darnic will kill you, he’ll have me kill you, if he thinks you’ll go after it. You will die, for nothing, if you go after it!”

 

She blinked, her expression oddly blank as she stared at him, and she noted slowly, “You really do care, don’t you?”

 

He flushed, looked down at his feet, and said, “Well, I… I am your master, after all.”

 

She was smiling at him when he looked up at her, almost fondly, “I suppose you are, even if you are clueless.”

 

“Hey,” he protested, “I’m not clueless!”

 

He paused, flushed as he looked at her, then asked, “Actually, I was going to ask… Do you think you could tell me more about yourself?”

 

She gave him a pair of raised eyebrows in response as he stammered, “You’re just so different from all of the legends I’ve been told about you. The scientific genius Doctor Frankenstein patched human parts together to make an artificial human, and that’s what you are. Except, he called you an unsightly monster, and fled from the scene. When you eventually caught up to him you pleaded for him to create another, a mate, so you were not alone. But he declined, and so you burned yourself alive. So, your wish then must be to gain a mate who’s the same kind of being you are. Right?”

 

She laughed, she threw her head back and laughed, going so far as to fall off the bench in an unsightly heap and roll on the grass in her laughter.

 

Caules flushed, “What? That’s the story everyone agrees on!”

 

She just laughed harder.

 

Finally, after a long moment, she wiped away tears of mirth and sat back on the bench, “Oh god, that is good, you know I think that wins. Well, first off, I sort of kind of do have a mate.”

 

“You do?” Caules asked, feeling himself flush unwillingly and also a stone of… was it disappointment lodging in his stomach?

 

“Yes, he certainly says as much,” Lily said, “And I suppose when someone waits five thousand years, jumps into the watery pits of grail hell, and suffers through Tom Jones for you it must be love.”

 

“I don’t…”

 

Lily then crossed her legs, closing her eyes in consideration, “Although, I’ve always considered Lenin to be my platonic soulmate if not just my soulmate period. True, he has been worryingly distracted by Bellatrix LeStrange, but I suppose I paid him back in kind with Babylonian demigod so we’re even.”

 

“Lenin?!” Caules balked, because he’d certainly never heard of Doctor Frankenstein and Vladimir Lenin ever crossing paths. Certainly, he’d never thought that, well, him and Frankenstein’s monster were…

 

His face became so red that you could almost fry an egg on it.

 

“It’s a love triangle for the ages,” Lily agreed with a small nod before standing, patting him on the shoulder, “Try not to think about it too deeply, you look like you’re about to have an aneurysm.”

 

He let out a strangled sort of gurgling noise even as she started walking away, hands shoved in her pockets. However, before she left the gardens she stopped and turned towards him, “Oh, right, in case that was some sort of awkward teenage boy flirting, the Babylonian demigod gets very possessive. He doesn’t like people touching his things, and hardly puts up with Lenin as it is. So, he’ll probably sword you into an unpleasant early death if he catches a hint of you even thinking your remotely worthy of touching my insignificant shoes. Or something like that so… Yes, keep that in mind.”

 

Caules wasn’t sure he had the ability to keep anything in mind anymore.

 

* * *

 

The grail…

 

It had looked, once again, nothing like a grail.

 

Instead it had been a round broken sphere, stored in the depths of the castle, glowing on the inside and already so interwoven with the thread of mankind and reality itself that…

 

Her current master, who she had decided was a well-meaning idiot, had thought she had meant she couldn’t access the grail for her wish at this point in the war. He’d been right, but Lily hadn’t had any interest in wishing.

 

“I still can’t destroy it,” she said in defeat, staring out into the dark terrain and feeling the wind whip through her hair. All this way, all this time, and she still couldn’t touch it. Or, at least, was too afraid to even try.

 

Like when she’d stood in the grail itself, the last time, with all the ills and all the hatred of mankind flooding around her…

 

The Holy Grail had been a testament to her own failures, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing that could be so easily banished.

 

The others were currently gathered watching the progress of Berserker of red, the slave rebellion leader Spartacus, march his way up towards the castle. Lily had stayed for part of it, but as usual, Spartacus was not quite the Spartacus she had always pictured. He certainly differed from his famous film portrayal of the man.

 

He was, she hated to say it, far less interesting than she would have been led to believe. Kind of like Dracula himself, who was something of an egotistical buzzkill.

 

Lily sighed, popped back in the window, and began making her way through the halls of the frankly garish castle. Now, it wasn’t quite Malfoy levels of over decorative ego but it was getting there. According to Wizard Lenin that was just a risk you ran with all magical folk, they liked their tasteless expensive magical baroque knockoffs.

 

Still, Lily always couldn’t help but find it a bit much.

 

However, the scenery wasn’t enough to truly distract her and soon enough her thoughts turned back to the grail itself and what Lily must do.

 

If she couldn’t destroy the grail, if she couldn’t destroy it now, then she had to win the grail war and see to it that she won the wish and then of course wished for nothing at all. Which meant that first she’d have to kill off this red team, pick them off one by one, then the black, and then her poor…

 

She stopped, blinking, stepped back towards a room and looked inside where one of the homunculi was clinging for dear life to a wooden table. Crouching across from him, large purple eyes wide with the expression of one having their hand stuck in the cookie jar, was none other than pink haired over-exuberant Astolfo, “Uh oh, looks like we might have been busted.”

 

Lily just blinked, blinked again, then asked Astolfo, “Aren’t you supposed to be in Celenike’s dungeon porn torture basement?”

 

Lily had made the unfortunate decision to check down there on her hunt for the holy grail. She still regretted it.

 

Astolfo laughed awkwardly, rubbed at the back of… his (or maybe it was her Lily honestly couldn’t decide or figure it out) head, “Well, Master’s a little busy at the moment subduing Spartacus. Actually, aren’t you supposed to be out there?”

 

There was a tugging in her head, an insistence from her current master to get her ass to the battlefield, but he had to learn that while he might supply her mana he was not in charge of her. If he wanted her there he was going to damn well have to waste one of his command seals.

 

“Nope,” Lily simply said, then pointed to the homunculus, red eyed and desperate as he clung to the table in fear, “What about him?”

 

“What about him?” Astolfo asked in turn.

 

Lily’s eyes then widened as she remembered some of the gossip of the day, “He’s the homunculus that escaped… They’ve been looking for him since yesterday.”

 

And the creepy little boy, his creepy masked servant, and Darnic actually had been looking for him. Looking for this insignificant homunculus among homunculi, special in the fact that he had shown enough will, enough energy, to escape the confines of his cage.

 

Even Lily had heard about it when she’d made a point about not hearing about any of this.

 

Looking down in his red eyes, even though he had been living in a tank for all his life, there was such a spark of lie and will to leave. Even if his existence was purposeless, meaningless, he would go out and see things she couldn’t believe…

 

“Well then,” Lily said with a growing grin towards the pair, “We’d better get moving fast because I somehow doubt they’ll be all that distracted for long.”

 

Astolfo paused, then grinned in turn, tugging on the homunculus’ hand and pulling him to his feet as he tagged along behind the pair of them and out of the castle. All the time he didn’t say a word, glancing from Lily to Astolfo, starting in fright as Lily placed her arms under him and threw him over her shoulders as they made their way through this hall, the next, then finally out the door and down the stone steps towards the great gate.

 

“This is Lily,” Astolfo narrated as they moved along, “She’s Berserker, but I don’t really know too much about her because she’s been kind of a moody loner.”

 

“That’s untrue,” Lily said as they made their way down the steps two at a time, “I’ve just been busy, and remembering that a grail war isn’t skittles and beer. You’ve been handcuffed in the basement with your master licking her way up to your nipples.”

 

Apparently, Lily was on the money as Astolfo flushed then stammered, “Hey now, we do not talk about what happens with our masters behind closed doors!”

 

After a truly judgemental pause and more flushing Astolfo admitted, “Alright, I’ll admit that Master has some pretty weird hobbies. And that I wish she’d give it a rest, but you know, master is gonna master, am I right?”

 

“Even if mine’s a hopeless dweeb,” Lily responded rather blandly, “I’m eternally grateful he isn’t yours.”

 

On her shoulders she could feel the homunculus turning his head to look across at the others, at the wounded homunculi hunched against the wall, each staring forward as if looking into the pit of hell. They glared across at them, at him, with sullen red eyes.

 

Still, none said a word, none moved to raise an alarm.

 

And yet, Lily thought as they exited the front gate, she could not help but turn and look over her shoulder and catch the eye of the golem owl.

 

Lily sped up to Astolfo, noting under her breath, “We may be running out of time here.”

 

Not that Lily wasn’t prepared to face the others, either here and now or later, but Caules still had those command seals. As hopeless and good the kid was, oddly reminding her of Neville in his prime, she had the feeling that if push came to shove he would side with his family and condemn the homunculus to whatever gruesome death awaited him in the castle.

 

“Wait,” the homunculus on her back said, “Wait, if I leave what will…”

 

“You will live,” Lily said, ducking into the forest and keeping her eyes peeled for any servant nearby other than Astolfo.

 

Astolfo ran ahead, grinning like an idiot, and announcing, “It looks all clear up here.”

 

“Only three years,” the homunculus said, weak fingers twitching around her shoulders, “And… And what if I can’t do anything in that time? What difference would it make staying here or dying out there?”

 

“That’s not why you live,” Astolfo said, “Protecting someone, claiming a destiny, those are things you aim for by living, not the living itself.”

 

She felt him intake a breath, perhaps to respond or else in realization of the noble purpose of living, but there was no time as Lily dropped him on the ground and with a hand motion decapitated the golems where they rose up from the earth.

 

Only purple stones were left where their hearts should be as they stupidly fell back into their foundation.

 

“Wow,” Astolfo said with a blink or two, loosely gripping his lance, “That was fast. Could you always do that?”

 

Lily however instead turned to face the newer, and greater, arrival, the unnamed Saber of black who, stoic as ever, looked down at them with fat Uncle Gordes running up behind.

 

“Astolfo,” Lily said, voice cold even as Uncle Gordes moaned and complained about his treatment at the hands of Yggdmillenia, “Take the homunculus and run.”

 

“Against Saber?” Astolfo asked, “But you don’t have a—”

 

“Take him,” Lily repeated, never moving her eyes from Saber, “And run.”

 

The pair took off leaving Lily and the swordsman to battle. The fat uncle growling and taking off after the pair while the great blade struck down where two seconds before Lily had been standing.

 

Except…

 

There was nothing in this man’s eyes, Lily thought. No joy, no sorrow, only a kind of endlessness that dully searched for a wish he could no longer remember at the hands of a master whose pride chafed at every turn.

 

There was no monologue, no irritation, no hint of concern as Lily dodged his every blow and offered her own in turn.

 

Even cut and bleeding, wounds healing almost as they formed, he felt nothing.

 

“Don’t you think,” Lily asked as she drew back, only narrowly avoiding the steel of his blade, “That he has a right to live?”

 

“Did he ask you that?” Saber asked, utterly indifferent and stoic in the face of the homonculus he was essentially sending to his death.

 

No, Lily thought as she just missed another blow, half of her hair getting caught under the blade and falling in curls to the earth. No, but he hadn’t had to, not to her who knew only too well what it was to be born into a world and be both prescribed a purpose and none at all. To be a slave of uncaring masters who only saw you for your use to them.

 

Lily would always care about the strive and dream of humanity, the great wish to obtain free will even from those beings who could never have hoped to touch it. No, especially from those beings who could never have hoped to touch it.

 

It was…

 

If Lily could not destroy the holy grail, the corruption and damnation of mankind, then she could bestow the gift of mankind onto him. She, at the very least, could do that much!

 

And if this man had to ask that question, if he could look at her and see nothing, Lily thought, then there really was no hope for whoever this poor bastard of a swordsman was. He would die, Lily thought with a great wrenching cry, as he lived.

 

Pointlessly.

 

Summoning the sword of Gryffindor, she moved it up through his chest and his heart. For a moment he was perfectly still, blue eyes widening with pain, and then dulled, the light dripping out of him as his blood ran blue down her sword.

 

Lily’s hands shook, gritted her teeth as his body slid further onto the blade, and though she could hardly say why she heard words leak from her own mouth desperately, “I’m sorry.”

 

She didn’t know why she said it.

 

She’d killed before, this was no different. It was no different than Quirrell with the knife, not really. No different from the poor Albanian wizards. Still, something in her recognized that there had once been more to this man than this…

 

And that by slaughtering him like this, Lily truly was a grail war participant in a way that she had not even been in the last war.

 

Last time, it had taken a command seal to sentence Alexander the Great to death, and by her own hand she had resurrected him. Kariya Matou had been much the same, except all of it by Kirei Kotomine’s endless command seals…

 

This time there was no one, nothing but her own will, and the sword of Gryffindor plunged into the heart of a man whose name she had never even bothered to learn.

 

He lifted his head, stared at her for a moment, not seeming to remember who she was and where he was, but then, slowly, almost in wonderment he said, “I forgive you.”

 

His hand reached towards her, shaking fingers entwining in her shorn hair, “I forgive you, for obtaining the wish I did not.”

 

Then he was gone, tilting forward with his mouth open and eyes glazed, fading into blue light and back into the realm of the dead and the forgotten. His blood though, was still on her hands, her clothes, and even on her face. It mixed with her tears, washing down her chin and then dripping on the forest floor, and all traces of it would soon be gone.

 

Like tears, she couldn’t help but think, in the rain.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Commissioned by AlleyKat2014 on fanfiction

“Come on, you heard Lily, we’ve got to keep moving!” Astolfo urged, the homunculus stumbling along behind her on roots and the uneven forest floor. Except, there wasn’t time for him to trip and fall, not now. So far there was no sound of pursuit, Astolfo thought, not from anyone other than Saber’s master at any rate (who even with the homonculus’ slow speed was falling further and further behind), but it was only Lily, Berserker, holding off Saber and Astolfo was pretty sure he knew where that was going to end.

 

Saber was universally acknowledged as the strongest general class in a grail war. Every class had their strengths and weaknesses, their advantages and disadvantages, but when it came to hand to hand combat even a gifted Lancer or a powerful Berserker wouldn’t hold up for long.

 

And Lily, Astolfo thought with tears unwillingly gathering at the corner of his eyes, hadn’t even had a sword.

 

She hadn’t even looked like a warrior, just a girl, like so many girls Astolfo had seen spread across the Holy Roman Empire. Astolfo didn’t care if Berserker’s master called her Frankenstein, if she was supposed to be this patchwork artificial monster, she didn’t look it at all.

 

Even Astolfo, who had a sword and a lance besides, could not have hoped to stand up to Saber in her place. Maybe, at best, delay him a few minutes while the homunculus made a desperate break for it. Yet Lily hadn’t even hesitated, had simply told Astolfo and the homunculus to run, and turned back to face him while Astolfo…

 

While Astolfo did just that, wondering if he should have stayed, or if saving the life of this homunculus was all he could do in respect of her wish. Granted, she might still live, probably would still live as Astolfo couldn’t think that Saber would kill her unnecessarily, not when they only had one Berserker…

 

He’d known so little about her, he thought bitterly. He’d tried to know most of the others, stood on firmer ground now with Chiron at least, but Berserker had been almost as much of an enigma as Saber.

 

When she’d shown up in Chiron’s room, walking in on Astolfo and the homunculus, Astolfo had thought for sure that that would be the end of it.

 

Astolfo, had misjudged her terribly.

 

“Can we really just leave her?” the homunculus panted out, eyes pained, but then his eyes were always pained. Ever since Astolfo had first seen him, naked, wet with the fluid from the containers in the dungeons, clinging to the wall desperately, he had looked like he was in agony.

 

As if, in his red eyes was not just his own suffering but all the suffering of all the homunculi to come before him.

 

“We have to,” Astolfo bit out, with enough force to cause the homunculus to stumble and look at him with those fearful wide eyes, “I don’t like it either, but if we’re getting you out, if we’re getting you far enough then we’ve got to!”

 

And Astolfo would come back, he promised himself, he’d come back and he’d help her, or save her, or do something to get her out of the mess that Astolfo had thought only he’d be caught up in.

 

“But am I really worth—”

 

“Yes!” Astolfo cried, cutting him off and prompting him forward, towards life and future and a world beyond the cruel and indifferent death that awaited him, “Everyone is worth it, especially you, and you know it too! It’s why you escaped from your tank, why you came to find me, why you’re following me now. Because you know that you’re worth it, worth life, and you know that Lily knows it as much as I do. She’s fighting for you, for your life, so you can’t disappoint her!”

 

Except even if Saber didn’t catch up soon, Astolfo thought, the others would soon enough. They wanted this homunculus badly, ironically, because so far he was the only homunculus in all of the tubes who cared enough to run from them. And Astolfo…

 

Astolfo had no illusions, he talked big certainly, he was proud of his works and his deeds, but he was… He was a man, a mortal man, standing among giants, gods, and warriors of legend. He couldn’t hold a candle to his compatriots, let alone a sword. However, Astolfo didn’t fight battles simply because he thought he’d win. No, he fought because he had to, because it was for what was right and…

 

Astolfo slid to a halt, throwing the homunculus to the ground and under cover and drew his lance, but then stopped as in front of him, appearing out of nowhere, was Lily.

 

“Oh, it’s you,” Astolfo said, blinking, “What…”

 

Astolfo trailed off, eyes moving up and down the girl. Her dark outer robe was torn, cut cleanly in two by a blade and burned at the edges by magic, almost half of her hair now missing and curling about her face, her skirt and tunic beneath it matted and stained with dark still-wet blood, and her face was blood-stained too.

 

Beneath him, he heard the homunculus gagging, looking up at her in terror.

 

“Is Saber…” Astolfo said, but he couldn’t finish the sentence.

 

Lily just looked at him. She looked… So old, older than him, despite the fact that he was almost certain she was years younger. Her eyes, that strange, alarming, green color looked for all the world right then like the homonculus’. He could so easily imagine her standing in the hallway, dripping in water, clinging to the wall and staring at her in helpless desperation.

 

In her hand was the bloodstained sword she’d lacked earlier, not Astolfo thought, a noble phantasm but a blade that was noble in its own right all the same.

 

Astolfo hadn’t meant for anyone to die in this, hadn’t allowed himself to consider the possibility beyond perhaps his own death and then Lily’s, he hadn’t realized that Saber could…

 

The sword disappeared, flickering into blue light that floated away into the night air, and Lily stepped towards them, crossing her arms for warmth and wiping at her face, smearing the blood like rouge across her cheeks.

 

“Saber, I’m afraid, won’t be joining us,” she said finally, but she paused as she reached Astolfo, looked backwards towards where Astolfo and the homunculus had just run from, “I… didn’t even get his name. After all of that, and I don’t even know his name.”

 

Astolfo hadn’t known it either, his master, Gordes, had refused to tell them.

 

And now he was gone, just like that, without a name or wish to be remembered by.

 

“We should get moving,” Lily finally said, taking a deep breath in, and then opening her eyes once again and allowing them to harden, “People die in grail wars, everyone dies in grail wars, it’s fine.”

 

It was strange, Astolfo thought, how heartless this girl could seem to make herself when it suited her. Still, Astolfo thought, for all that she looked intimidating, was intimidating, it was not quite enough to smother her own horror of this moment.

 

Astolfo said slowly, almost unwillingly, “Lily they… This is really bad, they…”

 

Astolfo didn’t know what they’d to her, what they’d do to him, for this. Losing any class of servant was bad, but losing Saber, Saber this early over a homunculus that they’d demanded be handed over days ago…

 

Lily kept moving, walking forward through the woods, not even looking behind her as she said, “I’ll handle it.”

 

How many heroes, how many warriors, Astolfo wondered as he started walking, pulling the homunculus up after her, had said that?

 

As if any of them were really capable of handling it, whatever the hell that even meant.

 

They ran in silence, Astolfo straining his ears for the sound of footsteps or horses, sometimes hearing it and sometimes thinking it was just his imagination. The only true sound in the place was that of the homonculus’ labored breathing as he desperately tried to keep up with them.

 

Astolfo wished he could say it was only a little further but that was a lie and he knew it.

 

If he wanted to make it, if he truly wanted to live, then Trifas wouldn’t be far enough. Who knew, maybe Romania itself wouldn’t be far enough. Even then, even beyond Romania, there were other mages besides Yggdmillenia who had use for a homonculus’ blood and mana.

 

The road beyond these woods would be long and hard but Astolfo had to believe it. Now he even had to believe it was worth the life of Saber as well.

 

“How did it happen?” Astolfo finally asked, staring at Lily’s bloodstained back.

 

“We fought,” Lily said shortly, “I won.”

 

“I know that but… Do you think there was a chance that you could have, I don’t know, spared him?”

 

She didn’t say anything for a very long time, a damningly long time, and Astolfo couldn’t help but imagine that there had been a chance for mercy. A very clear chance that Lily had, for whatever reason, decided not to take.

 

“I think he wanted to die,” she finally said, and it was quieter, more uncertain, “He… there was so little left in him, only the thought that he’d once had some sort of a wish, and he… It didn’t seem right, that he’d move past me and hunt him down like a dog for the rest of their miserable existences, just because he’d forgotten what free will tasted like.”

 

“And I thought to myself,” she said, a darker edge now to her voice, “If someone is going to get this goddamned wish, if someone’s going to face the wrath of the holy grail and unleash it for all its worth on this earth, then I refuse to let it be him.”

 

The wrath of the holy grail…

 

Astolfo would not have put it like that, had never put it like that in his own mind both in life and when he’d answered the call, but whatever it was that Lily imagined it was a far darker item than Astolfo had thought.

 

Lily then stopped in her tracks, Astolfo bumping into her, and god she smelled like blood.

 

“Hey, what’s the big idea?”

 

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Lily said, placing her hands on her hips, but not doing anything to sound alarmed, “It’s Gilgamesh.”

 

“It’s who?” Astolfo asked, but then peered over her shoulder to see for himself.

 

There, standing across from them, was the oddest couple Astolfo could ever imagine. The first was a woman, a very young woman by the look of her, only a few years older than Lily herself at best if not the same age. She was tall, long blonde hair the color of wheat held back by a braid trailing past her waist, held a flag in place of a sword and had her face framed by a metal crown of sorts. It was her eyes though, a dark blue that was almost purple, that seemed to cut through to Astolfo’s very soul if not beyond even that.

 

The other was a taller, golden man who was so bright in his armor that he was almost glowing like a sun in the dark woods. There was an otherworldly cast to him, to his pale features, his golden hair, and his red slitted eyes. He looked, Astolfo hated to say, more a king than Charlemagne ever had. More, Astolfo thought, he also looked like the sort who enjoyed sitting upon his throne and smirking down at fools, but for the moment his red eyes were captivated by Berserker.

 

In fact, Astolfo thought in some consternation, they were both captivated by Berserker. The man with a look of recognition, amusement, a touch of concern, and overbearing fondness that didn’t suit his features at all, and the woman with recognition, growing confusion, and a bit of alarm that equally didn’t suit her own features.

 

“I do not know this girl,” the woman finally said, and the way she said it was as if she had expected to know exactly who Lily was just by staring at her.

 

“Wait, Gilgamesh,” Astolfo said as his internal knowledge provided by the grail kicked into effect, “You don’t mean the Gilgamesh, do you?!”

 

Oh god, they were going to die. Astolfo was already outclassed by a mile, would have died against Saber within seconds, but against someone like Gilgamesh he was… He didn’t even know, an ant, he was an ant! And they were perfectly and utterly doomed.

 

“The one and only,” Lily responded with a cheerful smile, oddly at ease with the situation considering they were facing golden doom in the form of a pair of red class servants. She wasn’t even drawing her mysterious sword!

 

He was walking forward, past his dumbfounded companion and towards Lily where he then drew her towards him in a rather… Well, romantic embrace and with fondness said, “Lily, why am I not surprised to find you covered in the blood of lowly vermin?”

 

And then he was kissing her, even when she was covered in blood, in the manner that was usually reserved for ballads. He even was glowing that much harder, like then sun was setting behind the pair and painting them in red and golden light.

 

“I…” Astolfo said, staring at the scene and feeling really really uncomfortable for reasons he couldn’t quite explain even to himself, “Am so confused right now.”

 

At least, he thought looking at the blonde servant, he seemed to be in good company.

 

* * *

 

Gilgamesh, as he promised, had not left.

 

He had not left on the long trek from the highway, had not left as they’d finally entered the city of Trifas, and had not left as instinct had guided her towards the forests surrounding the fortress of Yggdmillennia.

 

It was just as well, Jeanne thought, because his presence proved a welcome distraction from her own growing and incessant certainty. Something was wrong, something was festering, and it was out of her sight yet more important for it.

 

Something with the red masters, whose masters were barely shadows and according to Gilgamesh hardly present at all, something in Gilgamesh and his skewed agenda so far from the grail and his search for a wife who had never existed in his lifetime, something in her own failed summoning, and now something within the black faction that had Saber and Berserker battling to the death against one another before the war had even truly begun.

 

And now, Jeanne thought as she stared across at Gilgamesh and his bride, in Berserker herself.

 

Jeanne did not know her. Where before the Grail had granted her the immediate truth and name of Gilgamesh, Karna, Siegfried, and now Astolfo, the girl was merely a red servant thrust into the role of Berserker with no greater truth behind her.

 

Save that she was covered in the blood of Siegfried and the evil dragon Fafnir.

 

No, Jeanne thought, there was too much truth within her. Staring at her was not reminiscent of her encounters thus far in this Grail war, with gods and mortals alike, but instead more akin to the visions she had borne in her own mortal life as a child. With the grace of God, Gilgamesh’s unnamed wife, his Lily, burned in the dead of night so brightly that she was almost blinding to stare at directly.

 

Yet, stare Jeanne did, at this girl who looked… So much like Jeanne herself, covered in the blood of the noble Siegfried who in turn had carried the blood of Fafnir, young, pale, and juxtaposed with her surroundings and yet more in place there than she had ever been before.

 

And only Gilgamesh seemed perfectly at ease in her presence.

 

Indeed, Jeanne thought with some discomfort, far too at ease in her presence.

 

Jeanne had almost forgotten what he was in the trek over. He had amused himself more with talk of wine and mongrels than he had of lust and the sating of it either with women or men. Yet here it was, that repressed lechery out in full force as he paid no mind to the girl’s shorn hair, her haggard appearance, or the blood smudged across her face as he devoured her lips as a parched man would in a desert.

 

Still, she supposed that meant he truly did have little interest in Jeanne herself, which she would count as a small favor.

 

“So, are we… fighting?” Astolfo asked, rubbing at the back of his… (no, her, that could not possibly be a man) head with chagrin and confusion, “I mean, because if we’re not, then we really don’t have time to just stand here—”

 

Gilgamesh paid Rider of red as little mind as he apparently did any mortal who did not ‘dress as a school girl’. He stepped back from Lily, golden gauntlets lingering on her shoulders, and with a truly fond smile said, “I have missed you.”

 

(He looked at her, Jeanne thought with the oddest of pangs in her heart, like a man in love.)

 

Lily, for her own part, blinked with large unnervingly green eyes (even more unnerving in person than they had been in a photograph), and rubbed at the back of her head, “I’ve… missed you too, I suppose, although I’ve been a bit busy.”

 

“I can see that,” Gilgamesh said, eyes moving up and down her body and taking in the damage, “Were you feeling particularly generous against your mongrel opponent?”

 

“Generous?!” Astolfo asked, yet Gilgamesh did not say the words as a joke, or at least, not a cruel one at her expense. To him it seemed natural that his Lily could not only defeat Saber of black but could do so with little more than a whim.

 

As if she was even more the cruel and fickle god than Gilgamesh himself was.

 

As Jeanne stared at the girl, at the unseen aura of power, of righteousness, beneath her skin she could not help but take Gilgamesh at his word. That this girl, perhaps above all others, could singlehandedly win the Holy Grail if she chose to.

 

“Perhaps,” the girl said, her voice cool and clear and giving nothing away, but Gilgmaesh only seemed fonder with that reply, now running hand through her hair, fingering the uneven ends.

 

“The mercy you spare for these curs never ceases to astound me, Lily,” Gilgamesh said with a small chuckle before, with a sigh, his red eyes moved to Astolfo and the homunculus she guarded, “However, your penchant for picking up strays and lost causes, I will admit, does grow tiresome.”

 

Lily did not respond, just stared at the man, as if there was something glaringly obvious he simply could not comprehend. That Lily, whoever she was, whatever she was, was not a thing she herself would describe as benevolent or merciful.

 

“Hey!” Astolfo cried, raising her lance towards Gilgamesh, “I am one of the twelve heroes of the great Charlemagne and—”

 

“A pretender king like all pretender kings,” Gilgamesh said in exasperation laced with something darker, “Who had the gall to parade about as something neither holy, Roman, nor an emperor.”

 

Atolfo cringed, flushed as Gilgamesh’s attention turned to the shaking homunculus, quivering beneath his glare, “And this one, this pathetic creature, at least he knows his place.”

 

“You have no right to be talking about strays,” Lily said with a meaningful nod towards Jeanne, “Who is that supposed to be, Lily meets Arthur Pendragon two point oh?”

 

With anyone else, Jeanne thought, if this girl was anyone else, she would be dead where she stood for those callous words to the king of heroes. Instead Gilgamesh laughed, apparently willing to take her words in mirth even if he took no one else’s. He motioned towards Jeanne casually, “This is Ruler, fifteenth servant and arbiter of the holy grail war.”

 

“Arbiter?” Lily asked, apparently quite stunned as she even did a double take towards Jeanne, “This bloody thing has an arbiter? Where the hell was that last time?!”

 

Last time, Jeanne thought, mind spinning as Gilgamesh merely shrugged and offered some witty, dry, response and the fickle nature of the Holy Grail. Last time meant that they had been here before, had been summoned by the Holy Grail before in some previous war.

 

That the pair must have met in some previous grail war, for they had not met in Gilgamesh’s lifetime.

 

Her attention was caught then by the girl stepping towards her, smiling as if they were friends with a hand stretched out, “Lily, Eleanor Lily Potter of England if we want to be technical, and you are?”

 

“Jeanne D’arc,” Jeanne said, truthfully and simply, without any titles or meaning to adorn it. Those, as always, she left to God and the people.

 

“Joan of Arc?” the girl asked, eyes widening and lips tugging into a grin, “Really, you know I didn’t think I’d meet you here, but then again I didn’t think I’d meet Dracula. All the same… It’s an honor, even if I am inconveniently English.”

 

Jeanne couldn’t help but smile at that, at the idea that so many years later after her death, she would meet an English warrior and not have to bear arms against them. In fact, Jeanne could not help but wonder if France and England were at peace now, if they had not been at peace for some time.

 

It was…

 

Jeanne could not help but wonder how small she was in this world, the hundred-year war in which she had fought for the crowning of the dauphin, and how it was that she had been remembered at all.

 

“Hold it, hold it!” Astolfo said, coming forward and waiving her arms wildly as she danced between the pair of them, “Okay, so she’s Ruler, or whatever. But that must make him red!”

 

Gilgamesh, as always, seemed irked by the reminder that the Grail war was a team endeavor. He even went so far as to growl out, “Hold your unworthy tongue, mongrel.”

 

Astolfo, however, was not intimidated as she instead looked to Lily, “He’s red, we’re black, and we’re just standing here talking like we’re old friends!”

 

“Well, Gilgamesh and I are old friends,” Lily finally explained, blinking again as she did so, as if even she was not quite sure how this had come about.

 

Friend, Jeanne thought as she eyed Gilgamesh, was also not the word she would use for that sort of behavior.

 

“Friends,” Gilgamesh scoffed (but again with that same, easy, fondness that he seemed to be able to spare for none but the girl), “One cannot be friends with his wife, it simply isn’t done.”

 

“Wasn’t Enkidu your only friend?” Lily said, her eyes narrowing in a lack of amusement, But Gilgamesh did not seem inclined to take it seriously as he pulled her back against his armored chest.

 

“The only man in all the world worthy of it,” Gilgamesh agreed, “And yet, for all that he was my brother, for all that I grieved his loss from the earth, I did not marry him.”

 

Lily said nothing for a moment, merely gave Gilgamesh the same look Jeanne could not help giving to the man, the shared thought that if Gilgamesh had been capable of marriage in any true sense at all then it had been to the wild Enkidu.

 

“So, what now?” Lily asked, staring out into the forest, listening to the endless quiet not yet pierced by the footsteps of mages.

 

“Now,” Gilgamesh said as he looked down at her almost in surprise, as if he had not thought he needed to say it, “You tell me which of these fools is your master, I drive a sword through his unworthy heart, and we go home. Then I suppose I must track down my comatose master, wherever Kotomine has stashed the wretch.”

 

“Kotomine?!” the girl spluttered, wrenching herself from Gilgamesh’s arms and whirling on him. In her words Jeanne caught a flash, an image, of a priest who was anything but a priest. An apprentice mage whose hands were covered in blood and the potential for carnage.

 

“I was fond of Kirei Kotomine,” Gilgamesh said, far too lightly for the gruesome visions that name contained, “He at least was never truly dull. That said, this is a different one. The priest Shirou Kotomine and he is… insufferable.”

 

The girl though still looked stricken, eyes wide and panicked, hands tightening into fists, and she said evenly with no hint of wavering, “Gilgamesh, you know I can’t leave.”

 

Gilgamesh did not seem to understand that for a moment, simply stared at her with a cocked head, a puzzled almost hurt expression. Then whatever she was leaving unspoken seemed to sink in him and his eyes narrowed in a darker and more baleful expression.

 

“You are not beholden to these fools, Lily.”

 

“I am beholden to the Holy Grail,” Lily responded, “And whatever it might do to the rest of us and the world. Gilgamesh, you know that I can’t leave, not until I use it to destroy itself.”

 

Gilgamesh neither agreed nor disagreed, said nothing as he stared at her, but Jeanne stared at the girl, felt her eyes widen and her mouth open as she said, “You mean to use the omnipotent wish of the Grail to destroy it.”

 

She heard the homunculus gasp, Astolfo flail again with arms flying everywhere, “Wait, you want what? Your wish is what?!”

 

“It must be destroyed,” Lily repeated, looking at Jeanne directly and… And it was so very odd, Jeanne thought, because she wondered if this was how people had felt looking at her. When they said that the light and vision of God had stared out from her eyes.

 

“If you mean to destroy the grail…” Jeanne started, grip tightening on her banner, “You know I cannot allow that.”

 

The girl just stared at her, eyes unreadable and so very strange, ignoring the flushing then paling of Astolfo. Then, slowly, the girl looked past her and down toward the homunculus who had been perfectly silent save for his breathing this entire time.

 

The homunculus shifted backwards, away from her sight, but she kept staring at him. Perhaps, Jeanne thought, the girl looked into his soul the way Jeanne herself was. This poor child, deprived of all choice, dignity, and freedom and yet who had yearned and clamored for it all the same. And yet…

 

And yet a vision of red blazed before her, his body exhausted and leaning over the corpses of his brothers and sisters, Astolfo’s borrowed blade in hand, and the sky red with blood and war. The battlefield, Jeanne thought with some growing horror, stretched in this nameless man’s future.

 

“You can take care of him though, can’t you?” Lily asked, then she grinned, an oddly cheerful thing that clashed terribly with her current battle worn appearance, “I would, but things as they are, I’m not sure how far I can take him.”

 

“Of course,” Jeanne said, perhaps too easily, perhaps easily than they expected but this…

 

He did not belong in the war, he had not chosen it even if God had chosen it for him. He had fought for his freedom, for his very idea of self, and Jeanne would not steal that from him and throw him back to the wolves.

 

It struck her, then, that perhaps more than the grail itself Lily had killed Saber of black for that same very reason. And Jeanne…

 

Jeanne could not take that sacrifice in vain, though she had hardly known the man.

 

Gilgamesh looked displeased, moved to say something, but it was at that point that the black faction was finally upon them.

 

There they were, masters in white, servants behind them, with the leading servant, Vlad Tepish and king of Romania, seated upon a horse to stare down upon them in judgement. Panting, as he appeared out of the clearing beside the rest, was Saber’s overweight master Jeanne had had the delight of meeting earlier.

 

“You,” he wheezed out, stepping forward towards Lily, the homunculus, and then widening his eyes at Gilgamesh who offered a sly and cruel smile back towards them.

 

“Oh, and here’s everyone, great,” Astolfo said, rubbing at the back of her head and smiling far too broadly.

 

A boy in the line, towards the end, wearing glasses shifted nervously and kept casting eyes at the girl, Lily. Her master, Jeanne thought, a master who was beginning to realize he had no control over his servant.

 

The dark-haired man, the patriarch, asked, “Rider, Berserker, what is it that happened here?”

 

His eyes fell on the girl, coated as she was in blood, but before any could make note of its Gilgamesh spoke, “The fat mongrel is in default.”

 

All eyes turned to him, Archer of black Chiron moving away from his wheelchair bound master and drawing his bow, Vlad remaining on horseback and looking down in judgement, but Gilgamesh did not seem to care in the slightest. In fact, Jeanne thought, he seemed almost amused.

 

“And you are?”

 

“The king of kings,” Gilgamesh responded, now examining his golden, shimmering, gauntlets in the light of his own presence, “King even of those pretentious fools who attempt to crown themselves in my absence from this mortal earth.”

 

“What do you mean, what are you talking—” Gordes started, stepping forward again only to be held back by the patriarch. Gilgamesh glared across at him, contemptuous and disdainful, much the way a cruel man might look at the remains of a squashed spider.

 

“I asked, mongrel, for one, simple, favor that not even a concussed monkey could fail. And you were so arrogant, so incompetent, you could not manage even that,” Gilgamesh said, and he asked, “Do you remember what it was?”

 

Sweat ran down Gordes’ face, thick and fearful, “I—”

 

“A message,” Gilgamesh sneered, “A single, simple, sentence, and you failed. I felt I had been generous enough, more generous than I had ever been before, and mine is not patience that should be tried, mongrel.”

 

Gordes mouth fell open and Jeanne…

 

Gilgamesh was taking the blame, no, reveling in the blame for Saber’s death and defeat. Retribution, he claimed, for Gordes Yggdmillennia’s failure to convey his message to Berserker of black.

 

And the bloodstains and battle worn visage of Lily would be written off as a fight, likely, with Gilgamesh himself after the fact. It was, at once, both a purely selfish and oddly selfless gesture that Jeanne was not certain how to parse.

 

“You are outnumbered here, servant of red,” Vlad scoffed, a spike appearing just to Gilgamesh’s left, nearly grazing his pale skin, “Your arrogance, I think, precedes you that you believe you can boast over the death of our Saber.”

 

Gilgamesh laughed, threw his head back and laughed, and as he did so the golden gates of Babylon opened with swords slowly tricking out from the light. Jeanne drew the homunculus over towards her, sheltering him behind her, as she waited for the swords to fall.

 

Lily stepped, slowly, carefully, in the path of the blades.

 

Gilgamesh frowned then, in a tone that carefully conveyed nothing, asked, “Must you?”

 

“I can’t leave, Gilgamesh,” she said, uncaring at the gasps towards his name, towards her casual releasing of that knowledge.

 

“You would sell your strength, your righteousness, your soul to these fools?!” Gilgamesh asked, gesturing wildly towards the expanse of the masters in black.

 

“They have that already,” Lily responded with an oddly soft smile towards the man, raising her right hand, the hand which had she been a master would have been inscribed with command seals, “They have more power than they will ever realize. And I am used to terrible bargains, unfair odds, and the tasks that no one in the world wants to accomplish.”

 

Gilgamesh did not take it so softly though, stepping forward, swords trembling with his anger in the gates, “You do not have to! You never have to! You have merely convinced yourself, allowed the world to convince you, that there is no one else! Leave the mongrels to their pitiful fate!”

 

“I’ll see you in Trifas,” Lily simply said and with a waive of her hand banished Gilgamesh and his gates from sight, as if they had never been there in the first place. Then, turning towards Jeanne with that same smile, she said, “I trust you’ll figure out what to do with our friend.”

 

And then with a blink, a crack, Jeanne and the homunculus were no longer in the forest but instead the rolling hills beyond it. She stared with wide eyes back at the trees, at the breeze rolling through the grass, searching for some sign of the black faction.

 

However, there was none now, all gone.

 

All hint of whatever punishment awaited Astolfo and Lily for the events of the day, for the aiding of the homunculus, now gone.

 

“What do you think will happen to them?” the homunculus, the boy, asked her.

 

Jeanne could not answer, could only stare and wonder herself, and then finally and quietly turn and say to him, “That, I’m afraid, is not your concern. You are free now, a truly living being in this world, and your quest will be to find what that means.”

 

A name, Jeanne thought, he would have to select a name for himself as she would search in her mind’s eye for a place to house him where Yggdmillennia would not be tempted to look.

 

Still, she thought, that vision of red, of blood, and of his death, stretched ever so certainly before her.


	5. Chapter 5

Command seals, like wishes given to genies, had their limits. Just as you couldn’t wish for infinite wishes, one could not command for infinite commands. Command seals, then, had to be used excruciatingly carefully even when conflict arose between a master and a servant.

 

Under normal conditions, you could only ever be awarded three, and one had to be reserved for the very end of the war. That meant only two were truly available for free use.

 

Typically, masters of previous wars had used them to stop or else prompt attacks, to maneuver unruly servants into necessary positions, or else to provide emergency assistance should the two be separated. However, they were… tricky things. Servants did not typically appreciate being robbed of their free will, had in the past held deep even lethal grudges against the masters who had dared to use them.

 

More, if used mistakenly, a second command seal sometimes had to be used to stop the first command. As had been the case with Uncle Gordes and Saber, where Uncle Gordes had commanded the use of his noble phantasm only for Uncle Darnic to force him to rescind it.

 

Caules, now alone in his room, looked down at his hand with quiet unease and a touch of guilt. Two seals remained, the third nothing more than a few stray lines of black etched across his skin, like it was nothing more than a smudge of dirt.

 

Berserker, Lily, the monster that undoubtedly wasn’t Frankenstein’s, had been commanded to remain in the dungeon to be interrogated and tortured by Celenike until Darnic and Vlad saw fit to release her. If, Caules thought darkly, they saw fit to release her.

 

And Caules…

 

Caules had failed as a master, despite his best intentions, despite the fact that he had reached out and tried to understand her. She had left with Astolfo to free a homunculus, and now Saber was dead at Archer of red’s hand. Not to mention that Berserker had some unknown and very strong connection with the man.

 

More, she was far more powerful than Frankenstein’s blueprints had ever hinted at. Far beyond, he thought wildly, the power of a mere D-rank Berserker. If they weren’t using homunculi, he thought with some terror, she would have drained him dry of mana ages ago.

 

And there were reasons that Caules had not been selected to summon the strongest of the servants. There were reasons he had been passed over for Saber or even Archer when Darnic had handed out relics. He did not have the capacity, the mana, to be a master to that kind of a servant.

 

Except now… If he closed his eyes, he thought, he could hear her screaming down in the depths of the castle.

 

All he could think, sitting here uselessly, was that this wasn’t helping. When she was let out everything he’d worked towards, everything he’d built towards, would be gone and he’d only have one real command seal left.

 

However, in the dark forest outside the castle Uncle Darnic had just looked at him with those dark piercing eyes and said in that calm authoritative voice that brooked no argument, “Caules, command Berserker to remain within the dungeon and to submit to all interrogation until she is released.”

 

Berserker had looked at him then, her eyes piercing through to his very soul, and as he’d held out his hand and sent out the command she silently damned him. He could feel, he thought, the exact moment she gave up on him. Except, he looked up now to his empty room, and quietly announced the truth he hadn’t said at the time, “Except, if I hadn’t, then he would have killed me.”

 

Caules had no illusions about his family, about mages in general, he was not his sister. They were not kind people, hardly even good in some cases, and Darnic was their patriarch for a reason. Darnic had killed many mages in their family already, Caules would only be one more, because a master who refused to obey was more worthless than an untamed servant.

 

And so, Lily was being taught a lesson he was certain she wouldn’t learn, while he could only sit and wait and hope that she could forgive him, even as he was certain that she wouldn’t. Had her last master, he suddenly wondered, done something similar?

 

She bore such contempt for the grail war, for her previous master…

 

Caules did not want that kind of feeling sent towards him, not truly.

 

“This is all because of a lack of communication,” Caules said morosely to himself, rubbing a hand against his face, “Between Uncle Gordes and Saber, me and Berserker…”

 

Their relationship was far more complicated than a commander and minion and each hero had a very distinct set of values, beliefs, and ideas of justice. They were people, in every sense of the term, and Caules had already missed something very important, had learned a lesson entirely too late.

 

“I should have asked if she was unhappy,” he said to himself.

 

Except, he thought she had been dreadfully unhappy since the beginning.

 

He stood, suddenly feeling restless, and made his way out of his room trying to clear his head. They wouldn’t release her, not yet, probably not for a while given how stubborn she was. Still, he could maybe go and see her, check on her and try to get her to understand (although that would probably get in the way of the point Darnic was trying to make).

 

“Caules,”

 

Caules looked up, saw Chiron rolling his sister towards him and stopped in his tracks. She was giving him that soft, sympathetic, smile as if she perfectly understood. Perfectly understood, he thought somewhat bitterly, when she and her own servant seemed to get along just fine.

 

Still, that was for the best. Better that he’d gotten the unruly, enigmatic, servant than Fiore. He… He loved his older sister, he really, truly, did and as the war went on, he became more and more certain that his wish would be reserved for her. If something happened to her then he would gladly give up all paths to the root just so that she could be safe and happy.

 

So, he was glad that she and her servant got on so well, and even if his current relationship with Berserker chafed, he wouldn’t switch their places for the world.

 

“Fiore,” he said, and at his greeting her smile dimmed as Chiron pulled her to a stop, instead she looked uncharacteristically grim. Of course, he thought, when she’d learned that magecraft meant the loss of her legs she’d always looked uncharacteristically grim. As if dimming her smile, hardening her soul, would make her that much more suitable to be Darnic’s heir.

 

Still, even for Fiore, she looked a little grimmer than she usually pretended to be, “Tomorrow we will head to Sighisoara.”

 

That was a bit out of the blue he thought, blinking and adjusting his glasses as he looked down at her, “Sighisoara, any reason why?”

 

As far as he knew the red faction wasn’t located there, and Yggdmillennia had only made their fortress in Trifas, and as far as he knew none of their own mages were there though he supposed the small town could have been infested with mages from the mage’s association.

 

Her eyes darkened, but they didn’t move from him, and her voice didn’t waver as she stated, “We believe that Jack the Ripper is there.”

 

Jack the Ripper, of course, being Assassin, the servant of black who had never made an appearance. A servant, Caules slowly realized, that was more rogue than even his own wayward Berserker.

 

And… He thought numbly, and he’d be going without Berserker, Lily, by his side.

 

* * *

 

Lily had never been tortured before.

 

It was a dazed sort of thought, but one that amazed her now that she thought about it, murdered at least twelve times over but never tortured. Quirrell had threatened it, at the end, but had thought it a waste of time and never gotten that far when he could settle for Hermione Granger instead. So, Lily had been murdered, but never tortured.

 

Blood was running down her arms, her fingers spasming, a dark magically charged rod impaled through the palms of her hands now trapped above her head. And at this moment, it twisted, a wet crunching noise reaching Lily’s ears as she gritted her teeth against the pain she had been commanded to appreciate.

 

She had never been tortured before, she thought, and she was going to be later than she thought meeting Gilgamesh in Trifas.

 

“Oh, you are a cold one,” the woman, Celenike said as she leaned close enough that Lily could smell the woman’s breath, the perfume on her collar, “That does not change the fact that Saber, the most powerful class in this war, is gone because of you and Astolfo!”

 

Lily bit her tongue, stopped herself from replying that he was gone because he was a fool who cherished nothing, who would destroy them all if he got his hands on the grail, and that Lily must win this grail war at any cost.

 

Then, painfully, Lily forced herself to open her eyes and smile directly at the woman.

 

The twisting became more pronounced, more forceful, as the woman forced it deeper into her skin, and Lily let out a scream at the pain.

 

“And Archer of red, Gilgamesh of Babylon? He knows you, Gordes says he has been looking for you before yesterday, calls you his wife. Truly odd as Gilgamesh never had a wife,” the woman leaned close, so that the flesh of her cheek touched Lily’s, so that her lipstick smudged against Lily’s ear.

 

Sweat poured down Lily’s face, but it wasn’t warm, instead cold and drenching that chilled her along with the feeling of the blood running down her hands.

 

She couldn’t help but remember that it was because of Lily that these ungrateful people, her own master who thought making her endure this would change anything, were even alive. They could have been dead in seconds, their blood staining the forest floor, and Lily would be anywhere in the world but here.

 

“So, Berserker, just how does he know you and why does he want you?”

 

Lily looked at the woman, breathing heavily, and offered the closest thing to a rueful smile that she could, “I was ordered to sit here and take it, not to answer your questions.”

 

The smile became a grin and, and drawing in energy, Lily spit in the woman’s face. At this point, she thought with a small chuckle, it was the least, and only thing she could truly do.

 

The woman wiped the spit away from her cheek, grinding her teeth in rage, while Lily simply chuckled as she hung in midair. Of course, Lily thought as her eyes strayed to the rack, she suspected that it could and would get much worse before it was done.

 

Lily wasn’t here to answer questions, no, she was here to prove a point. They wanted to break her in a way they couldn’t properly do with only three command seals to her master’s hand. They thought that if they went far enough, push far enough, then Lily would obey all orders and answer all questions without having to do this song and dance again.

 

It wasn’t a bad idea, she supposed, as Lily had never really been tortured before and didn’t know how far it would take her to break. However, as Quirrell had once said, she suspected that she could outlast their patience.

 

More, she could outlast Gilgamesh’s patience.

 

He’d wait in Trifas, for now, seething at some bar and probably holding it against her. However, odd as it seemed, where he would have killed anyone else in her place she thought he’d come for her. If they kept her here long enough, if she didn’t make it to Trifas, then he’d burn down both the castle and the town in his quest to find her.

 

Certainly, she thought with a strange, growing, amusement, she could outlast this woman’s patience.

 

“You know, when they told me to come down here I expected something much different, much more unpleasant,” Lily remarked, her voice more ragged than she would have liked but making do for now, “But I suppose you leave all your kinky sadism for Astolfo. Tell me, have you and him had this fun talk yet, and when you did, did he lie back and think of England too?”

 

Oh, Lily thought with some glee, she had, and he did. And better, Lily thought, she bet he wasn’t the least bit repentant either. No, he proudly had smuggled the homunculus out of the castle without a thought towards his master.

 

And if she left that rod in Lily’s palms any longer, Lily thought in an amused pain-filled daze, she’d start looking that much more like the lord and savior Jesus Christ. All she needed was a matching iron nail for her feet and she’d have the full set of scars.

 

How ironic, that the people who seemed to have no idea who and what she was, would pick such fitting scars.

 

“You will bend, girl, and then break. It will be slow because you are proud, painful because you are stubborn, and utterly delightful in every respect,” Celenike said, pressing up against Lily in the most uncomfortable of manners while whispering in her ear, “And I only wish that you were half the man Astolfo is so that I could take pleasure from it.”

 

At this the woman twisted the rod in Lily’s hands that much harder, the blood still somehow coursing down Lily’s arms, making her light headed as she writhed. Still, Lily looked up, her lips twitching as she attempted to smile back, “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”

 

“And when you do break,” the woman said, hardly deterred at all, a hint of madness entering her yellow gaze, “I will be there.”

 

Of all the people in all the worlds, Lily suspected, this woman would not be there.

 

After all, Tom Marvolo Riddle in almost all his incarnations, had promised to be at that moment first. Celenike Yggdmillennia, Lily thought with a pained chuckle, would have to get in goddamn line.

 

* * *

 

“Why exactly, Gilgamesh, am I here?”

 

Jeanne had only just left from the old man’s house, the kind man who had offered to shelter the homunculus boy during the course of the war. It was, she feared, a rather feeble attempt to hide him from the bloodshed. His grim future, himself kneeling wounded over a pile of the dead, had seemed certain.

 

She would fight his fate as best she could, but as far as she was aware her visions had never been false. Once, long ago, she had even gone so far as to foresee her burning in Rouen at the hands of the English clergy.

 

Still, he did not deserve a fate so cruel, to be brought into this world so quickly and then to perish in the bitter despair of battle for a war that was not his. If God was kind to him, she thought, then He would allow the homunculus to find meaning and life in somewhere beyond the Holy Grail war.

 

Almost immediately afterwards she had been met on the unpaved road by Gilgamesh, dressed in gleaming armor, staring out past her with a rather upset look on his face. He had glanced towards her, cold and assessing with those alien red eyes, and then a moment later said, “Good, you’ve lost the puppet. We’re going drinking.”

 

And, true to his word, a short while later both he and Jeanne were holed up in a bar in Trifas with Gilgamesh pouting over their wine selection which, apparently, was the equivalent of horse piss and not even worth the coin of unworthy peasants.

 

In Jeanne’s day and age, that horse’s piss was the only thing one could drink without courting death. Although, she supposed she would concede that times had changed, that the girl Laeticia whose body Jeanne had borrowed was only just old enough to drink by the modern laws of France. Still, she thought, Gilgamesh did not need to remind the measly peasants that he had enough money to never fear death nor sour drink.

 

“Lily, it seems, has temporarily abandoned me to her own damnable nobility,” he sniffed at the insult, “As she pointed out, you’re as close a substitute I can find until she comes to her senses.”

 

He looked, Jeanne thought, almost adorably insulted by it, even going so far as to pout. It was… truly an odd image given the terrifying amount of power the man held as well as the extreme lack of nobility of his spirit.

 

“You expect her to come to her senses?” Jeanne asked, sipping from her own wine, which truly was not half as bad as Gilgamesh had led her to believe.

 

“One would hope,” he muttered, “But she can be proud, stubborn, and infuriatingly noble when the mood strikes her.”

 

“Almost as if she was a heroic spirit,” Jeanne could not help but note drily, which only caused Gilgamesh to glare across at her, utterly unamused by her words.

 

“Yes, but heroism is an oft misunderstood art,” Gilgamesh retorted, “Something I suspect you understand all too well.”

 

“What do you mean?” Jeanne asked, but he did not answer immediately, merely swirled his drink in one hand as he considered her.

 

“You do not consider yourself particularly noble or heroic, do you?” he asked instead of answering, “Most of these heroic spirits, that I have met at least, tend to natter on about this or that and how chivalrous and valiant they are. One could almost choke on their chivalry, on their heroic deeds and ideals, which they so often use to hide from what they truly are.”

 

“You though,” he said motioning to her casually, as if she were merely evidence to be examined at a whim for his own use, “Claim to be neither knight nor king nor warrior, yet you are summoned all the same with a flag in your hands rather than a sword.”

 

“Your point?” Jeanne asked, leaning forward to look him in the eye, to see what lay beneath the astounding arrogance of his spirit.

 

“My point is that you understand that sometimes, the very essence of heroism, is to do something a lesser man would find barbaric. We heroes and kings do not operate on the same moral spectrum as the common mortal dog, and you know it.”

 

She said nothing, did not reprimand him for presuming to know her or what she believed, nor did she agree with him that she had so very often been misunderstood. She had been… separated, even from the men she had inspired and led through war, as if she walked on a different plane than them. The English in Rouen, she remembered, had been terrified of her even as they had put her in chains on trial.

 

To them Jeanne was either a witch or else a prophet, and either was an answer they could not readily accept.

 

Still, she looked across from him and noted calnly, “And yet, you believe that Lily is damning herself to this Holy Grail war and her own nobility.”

 

He said nothing, tapped his fingers moodily and impatiently against the wood of the table, while Jeanne thought back to the strange girl that was Gilgamesh’s wife. The girl with no past, Jeanne thought, and no future either.

 

Someone who, even more than the homunculus himself, did not belong in the Holy Grail war. Yet, she was determined not only to participate, but to win as well. And her wish…

 

“Why does she wish to destroy the Holy Grail?” Jeanne asked, she would have at the time, but it seemed safer somehow to ask Gilgamesh instead. Strange as it seemed, something was telling Jeanne that the girl was the far more dangerous of the two.

 

“It is an abomination, not even worthy of my treasury,” Gilgamesh said with a somewhat exasperated sigh as he sipped at his drink, “Just as this drink is an abomination, I really should just pour my own wine and be done with it.”

 

“The Holy Grail is responsible for your current existence,” Jeanne pointed out and he just glanced at her, somewhat amused.

 

“Yes, and I’m not even supposed to be here,” at Jeanne’s questioning glance he amended, “My idiot master, I believe, had intended to summon the archer Atalanta from Greek myth. Of course, on being graced with my magnificent present, the man hardly complained.”

 

“You mean,” Jeanne said slowly in horror as what he was saying dawned on her, “That you were not summoned via your own relic?”

 

“I suspect Lily was not either,” Gilgamesh said with a rather cruel smile, “After all, she wasn’t the last time.”

 

Then…

 

“Then it is worse than I thought,” Jeanne concluded quietly, “I was… When I was summoned by the grail it was without enough mana to create my own physical form. I was forced to borrow hers, this girl’s, which she was kind enough to offer. That I was summoned at all as Ruler means that something has already gone wrong.”

 

“Wrong?” Gilgamesh asked, golden eyebrows raising and giving her an amused smile, as if he found her almost cute, “The thing is a monstrosity, corrupted by the sins and terror of mankind, a system of despair that will all too easily end us all. That you put so much faith in such an object, to believe it should follow these simple rules, is astounding.”

 

“Why do you say that?” Jeanne asked, an edge to her voice as she turned to look at him, felt the room darken at her own growing fear and the way he said it with such easy insistence. Much, she thought, the way she had delivered information gained from her own visions.

 

“I have seen it,” he said simply, “In all its wretched glory.”

 

Jeanne… Did not know what this grail was, only knew that it was called the Holy Grail, that she had been summoned by it, that something had gone wrong already, and that she was to act as arbiter in the war…

 

“Do not look so upset,” he said, waiving a hand in front of her face, “For better or worse, Lily has insisted on taking care of it. Provided nothing unfortunate happens to her cur of a master, I suspect that in short order she will do away with the red and the black to earn the wish to destroy it.”

 

Jeanne’s eyes widened, she felt her breath catch in her throat as she stared across at him, “But that will mean…”

 

“I suspect she will save me, my master perhaps, for last,” Gilgamesh said, as if he was not discussing his death at the hands of his wife, “But even so, there are other worlds than these. I will see her again.”

 

And he smiled at that last bit, as if that, truly, was all he could hope for in this.

 

“Unless she comes to her senses,” Jeanne finished quietly for him,

 

“Unless, of course, she chooses to be reasonable,” Gilagmesh agreed with a sigh and a nod, “Of course, my wife makes it a point to be anything but reasonable. It’s endearing, when it isn’t tiresome.”

 

And what would Jeanne do?

 

It was against the rules to destroy the grail, if only because the grail itself was the creator of the rules Jeanne had been summoned to uphold. Yet, she thought, she did not know what the grail itself even was.

 

She was not certain she trusted Gilgamesh, though he seemed the type to find lying beneath him, but if what he said, if what the girl said, was true…

 

Then what would, what could, Jeanne do?

 

“I suppose,” Jeanne said slowly, “My next task will be to seek out this church of yours. To confront the red masters for myself.”

 

“You’ll only find the priest,” Gilgamesh said.

 

“Even so, it is the role I have been summoned to fulfil,” Jeanne declared, draining her glass dry, “I will not falter beneath it.”

 

She then noticed that he was looking at her with a peculiar, almost unnerving, fondness.

 

“What is it?” she asked but his smile just grew fonder.

 

“I seem to meet the most valiant, dutiful, and ridiculous of women in grail wars. You even have the same sort of look to you, the bright hair and fire to your eyes. If I were a younger man, still seated on the throne in Babylon, I do believe I would have started a harem of you all.”

 

“By the grace of God,” Jeanne said with a blush staining her cheeks and horror in the pit of her stomach, “You are not a younger man.”

 

At least, Jeanne thought to herself as she poured herself another glass, she hoped he was not a younger man. Gilgamesh’s incessant tailing of her was one thing, his camaraderie another tolerable thing, but his romantic interest…

 

Well, he might very well find her flag buried in his stomach.

 

* * *

 

“Good lord, you eat like a pig.”

 

Mordred glanced up, mouth filled with donut holes and his hand crammed in the bag for more and found mysterious stranger in black looking down at him in utter contempt. He was still wearing a ridiculous amount of black that was only suitable for Mordred’s mother or a funeral, and still just as pretty in the twilight as he had been in the middle of the night.

 

“Goddammit,” Mordred cursed, “What the hell do you want?”

 

Mordred’s master was gone, had spent the day doing mage association business here in Sighisoara, tracking down someone who’d been offing mages, and had left Mordred to fend for himself. Of course, Mordred was fine with this, had planned to do a little sight seeing but had quickly found that there was nothing to see. This place didn’t even look all that different than the cities surrounding fortresses when he’d been alive, for all that it was on the continent instead of Britain. You’d think all those visions of skyrises and amusement parks were just fantasies injected into his head for the grail’s goddamn amusement.

 

Which, of course, left Mordred tetchy, hungry, and itching for a fight with somebody that probably wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. Ever since that first fight with the golems in Trifas, with the man in black congratulating them and giving them the picture of his lady love, they’d just been stuck in a crypt with Mordred bored out of his mind.

 

Not just bored either, but a little disturbed. His mother had never lived in a graveyard, exactly, but sometimes it had felt close enough to one. The smell of death, decay, and necromancy was far too familiar for Mordred’s comfort.

 

His master was supposed to be back any minute, they’d agreed to meet here in the park at sunset, but it seemed like Sir Prettier Than Lancelot had beaten him to the punch.

 

The man smiled, a polite, entirely too pretty smile that made Mordred want to punch him in the teeth. His teeth, which, of course were unnaturally white and straight.

 

“And how do you know my father, anyway?” Mordred asked, not even willing to question whether the man had been bluffing or not. No, he’d known Mordred on sight, had made the connection to Mordred’s father rather than his mother, Mordred was willing to bet his left hand that the man knew Arthur Pendragon.

 

The man considered this quietly, clearly debating what he wanted to say, and then finally noted, “We fought against one another in a grail war.”

 

“Huh?” Mordred asked, and then his eyes widened, and he leaned forward, spraying donut chunks everywhere as he asked, “You mean he was… He was summoned in a grail war?!”

 

That, of course, meant that the man had had a wish but… As far as Mordred was aware, as much as he had ever known, Arthur Pendragon had never allowed himself the luxury of dreams or wishes. The man was the perfect king, so perfect, in fact, that he had inspired man after man into rebellion until Mordred himself had been among them.

 

Unacknowledged, unrecognized as heir to the throne, because his father had never found him worthy of it.

 

What could Arthur Pendragon, Mordred thought in sudden fear and rage, have possibly wanted from the holy grail?

 

“You’re lying,” Mordred said, voice rough in his throat, eyes wild and bright as they pierced the man’s pale blue eyes, “You’re a liar, you never knew my father at all.”

 

“I met her,” he corrected wryly, “I did not say that I knew her.”

 

“No,” Mordred repeated, mocked as he summoned his armor from the void and listening to it clank over his clothing, “You certainly did not know him if you are making that kind of mistake.”

 

That Arthur Pendrgaon had been born a woman, Mordred thought, was perhaps his father’s only true flaw that Merlin had gone to such horrific lengths to disguise. That the man who had pulled the sword from the stone had not been a man at all.

 

It was then, with fingers tightening around his sword, that Mordred realized it, “That’s your noble phantasm.”

 

He looked over at the man in shock, in horror, as even with his fingers tightening against the sword he did not bring it up, “You get me talking and make it so that I forget to fight.”

 

The man neither agreed nor disagreed, just smiled, oh so politely, and then asked, “By any chance, have you seen the girl?”

 

“The girl?” Mordred asked in complete confusion, before realizing what he meant, “The girl in the photograph?”

 

Then he cursed himself forced his arms, heavy as lead, to lift the sword and bare it against the man who should have been so easy to destroy, “No, I won’t get distracted!”

 

“I take it that’s a no,” the man said, without a care in the world, glancing over his shoulder to where Sisigou was quickly approaching, then said, “A pity, that would have been awfully convenient.”

 

And just like that he was gone, disappeared into thin air with a large crack leaving Mordred bearing his sword at thin air while his master ran towards him.

 

“Was that—” Sisigou started but Mordred beat him to it.

 

“Our friend and favorite servant of black?” Mordred asked, “You bet your ass, I really hate that guy.”

 

“Didn’t think you could take him?” his master prompted, and Mordred…

 

He frowned, didn’t want to say that it hadn’t crossed his mind until the very end, and then that it had been hard. That for all Mordred disliked the guy, there was also something about him that was so damned appealing that it made it not just hard to hurt him but hard to remember that you weren’t friends with him. If the guy had wanted to fight…

 

“Not here,” Mordred said instead, and then lifted his eyes to his master’s face, “Not without you.”

 

They were, Mordred thought, something of a team after all. Even if the guy was a necromancer who insisted on living in a graveyard.

 

“I suppose it’s just as well,” the man said as he turned his eyes to wear the man had just disappeared, “Because I suspect our friend has been sucking the life out of every mage who has set foot in this town. And we’ve got a real good chance that he’ll come after me next.”


	6. Chapter 6

“Come on, come on, where is that motherfucker?”

 

Mordred cast his eye around the city, vision impeded by his armor, looking for a familiar face and shadow as he walked beside his master in tense silence. Sisigou was more stoic than usual, more tense, expecting the same ambush Mordred was. Except the ambush wasn’t coming, not for an hour of walking around the city alone at night.

 

It reminded him of battle, of some of the longer drawn out battles, where they’d wait and they’d wait and they’d wait and the enemy wouldn’t be coming until dawn. Mordred would stand there in armor ready to eat his own legs off and there would be Arthur, father, standing perfectly still without any expression at all on his face.

 

Or, perhaps it reminded him of his childhood in his mother’s tender claws. Her dark caverns filled with dead and dying things, dark magicks almost forgotten in the wake of budding Christianity. Waiting and waiting for the day that he could leave and join Arthur’s court. Promising his mother it was for revenge and kingship but mostly for sunlight, glory, and father.

 

Father, the only part of his terrible, sacrilegious, birth that contained any light or glory at all.

 

“Master,” Mordred asked as he scanned another alleyway, looking for a single dark shadow out of place, “You sure this guy’s coming?”

 

His master, wearing sunglasses as always even though it was goddamn night out, said nothing for a very long while. Finally, he said in his typical gruff and almost aloof manner, “All we know is that he’s been draining the magical energy from mages left and right for a few weeks. Servants take significant amounts of mana to maintain form on this plane. If his master is missing in action or lacking in the mana department, then he’s going to need every drop of mana he can get from any mage he can find. He’s run out of mages in this town, and he can’t afford to be picky.”

 

Mordred’s master had assumed, earlier, that the guy was a rogue servant of black given that red was accounted for. Mordred wouldn’t say he disagreed, and if he was rogue, then like Sisigou said he’d need mana by the barrelful. Except, then where was he?

 

He could wait until they were truly off their guard, except they wouldn’t be and he was clever enough to know it, and if he waited too long then they’d just haul ass back to Trifas and he’d be without mana once again and without a home field advantage. No, master was right, he had to strike now and strike hard.

“But where is he?!” Mordred cried, gripping his sword tighter and finally stopping in his tracks to look at their surroundings, “Come out you coward! Are you so afraid of my sword that you’d rather shrivel than face death in battle?! Come out and face me like a man!”

 

“Saber,” his master chided but Mordred wasn’t having it, gritting his teeth and staring out into the night, trying to feel the guy’s pulsing mana wherever he was laying in wait. But there was nothing, or at least, nothing he could really pick up out here.

 

He really hated this guy.

 

It wasn’t just because he kept getting away either, that he knew Mordred’s father, or that Mordred had been itching for a fight for days now, it was…

 

Mordred thought that was his noble phantasm, that charming charisma that was so damned distracting Mordred couldn’t hit him, except Mordred and his father as a rule were impervious to glamors and the like. If that was the case Mordred would have been taken out by his mother or Merlin long before Arthur’s sword could touch him.

 

Which meant either he was cutting through the protections Mordred had or he was somehow just that distracting in his own right. Which…

 

A holy grail war, a previous holy grail war in which Arthur Pendragon had participated for reasons Mordred couldn’t possibly understand. A holy grail war and a woman in a photograph, little more than a girl, who looked barely human at all.

 

The man was too much of a mystery, cut too close to home in too short of a time, as if simply by staring Mordred in the eye he had seen to the heart of him. Had known that Arthur Pendragon was the name of his own Achilles heel in a way that Mordred didn’t even think Sisigou understood. And that was his power, that was his gift, not enthrallment but something far more dangerous.

 

The ability to know people around him in an instant.

 

But that wouldn’t help him here, Mordred hadn’t registered him as a threat then, hadn’t needed to. This time though they would clash swords and there was no question that Mordred would be the victor.

 

They entered an open and predictably empty plaza, it was a very clear night, the moon making everything rather bright and not of any use to an assassin. Mordred paused for a moment in the center along with his master, looking for a new path to follow, any new leads.

 

It was standing there, of course, like a jackass that the golden arrow came. Mordred threw himself and his master out of the way barely in time, coughing as Mordred brushed off the rubble and moved them forward and hopefully out of the archer’s range, “Damn it all, he’s an Archer!”

 

Not too surprising, he’d always taken the high ground whenever he’d had the opportunity and hadn’t seemed one for direct combat. Still, Mordred had figured that or Assassin or Caster, he had that general air of dark nastiness that usually came with those classes versus the other four. He hadn’t necessarily reminded Mordred of his mother, of Merlin, but he definitely hadn’t seemed like a swordsman either.

 

Mordred supposed it was moot point as he threw off his helmet (being able to see clearly was more important at this point than avoiding stray shots to his head) and started sprinting in the direction of the arrows while his master sought cover, “I’ll hunt him down! You sit tight!”

 

Sisigou groaned, moved against a wall and rummaged for his creepy mage shit and yelled back, “Got it!”

 

Mordred barely heard it as he moved off through the streets and up the walls towards the source of the arrows. Which was rather bold of the bastard as Mordred would have thought he’d change position after the first failed shot, perhaps he wasn’t a coward after all, perhaps he did intend to die a warrior’s death.

 

Only, on scaling the wall and bringing his sword down on his enemy’s head, the man awaiting her was taller, broader, with longer hair and darker olive skin. This, Mordred realized with a cry of rage, was not the man he’d been looking for.

 

Which meant Mordred had just left his master to deal not only with Archer’s master but Mr. Pretty as well.

 

Still, Mordred couldn’t believe he was thinking this, but his master could handle it. He’d probably need some backup later, but he could handle it. Mordred well and truly believed that. This guy’s master though, well, a mage was a mage, and Mordred had the sense that the man in black would be eating well tonight.

 

* * *

 

“You shouldn’t be out here.”

 

Fiore whirled, mechanical arms and legs moving with her as she turned to look at… At an unusually good-looking man standing just behind her in the watchtower that Chiron had selected in order to take out Saber and Assassin. They’d failed that, or at least, failed taking out Saber when Assassin hadn’t made an appearance, and Chiron had gone to confront the servant while Fiore intended to take out the master. At least, that was the plan until now.

 

This man didn’t look at all like Chiron. He was slight where the Centaur was broader and more muscular, pale where Chiron was olive skinned, dark and mysterious looking where Chiron was warmth and openness.

 

Yet, he didn’t look like Uncle Darnic either, who Fiore had always seen as that tall, dark, and handsome type.

 

The man’s eyes were a bright, pale blue that glowed even in the night (like her own eyes except somehow brighter) and he repeated with genuine concern, “It’s dangerous out here, the news says there’s a serial killer on the loose.”

 

She flushed, realizing then where she was and who she was talking to (that this was the man in real danger from Jack the Ripper rather than her) and said, “Yes, it is, however I’m fully qualified to deal with it. You, however, should return home immediately.”

 

This assignment had been given to her, after all, when Uncle Darnic had revealed that Jack the Ripper’s master had been missing since the war even began. That mages both from Yggdemillennia and the mage’s association had been dying in every town Assassin passed through since then.

 

Jack the Ripper had gone rogue, his master was missing in action, and he was now a liability rather than anything of use. More, Fiore was a mage, the mage next in line to follow after Uncle Darnic in the family, and as such she was more than prepared for such an undertaking.

 

Even if the servant had yet to appear.

 

The man gave her a rather dry look, eyebrows moving upwards, taking her in piece by piece including her metal limbs and finding her something amusing rather than competent or threatening, “Really?”

 

“Yes, really!” she glowered not caring for the way he overlooked her, no, the way he seemed to see right through her and judge that she wasn’t quite the mage she thought she was. Mages were like Uncle Darnic, mages did whatever it took at whatever the cost. As a mage, Fiore was now preparing herself to engage in combat with red Saber’s master as Chiron cornered the servant.

 

Her eyes widened, she’d gotten distracted from that. She turned to look over her shoulder, to jump off the tower…

 

Except then her mind was suddenly empty, she slowly looked back over her shoulder and registered a glowing stick of wood, a wand, pointed at her and the man’s eyes not containing a hint of compassion or pity within them.

 

“Oh,” Fiore said slowly, the words sounding distant even to herself, “It was you.”

 

She watched with disinterest, even though it felt like her soul was trapped away from her mind screaming at her to move, to call Chiron back, to fight, as he moved towards her with that wand, towards the hand bearing her command seals.

 

“You’re Jack the Ripper.”

 

She said it even as the mana released from his wand reached the edge of her skin and began to cut through her flesh. She cried out then, watching in a dull distant sort of horror as her hand dropped below her feet, still bearing each unused command seal.

 

Her ability to call Chiron back instantaneously was now gone.

 

Her options for survival, in just a second, had gotten significantly slimmer.

 

“Jack the Ripper,” the man noted as he picked up her pale hand in his, ignoring the blood dripping down his fingers as he stared at her command seals in disdain, “Is that who you think you summoned? I had wondered.”

 

He looked across at her then, at her blank expression, and said, “It’s nothing personal, Fiore Yggdemillenia. I simply had neither the time nor the inclination to play at being servant, except that I couldn’t leave until I found what I needed to either. Consider it a consequence of entering a grail war and of being so arrogant as to think you could send off your servant at a moment like this.”

 

“Then Saber would have escaped,” Fiore said dully, still feeling so distant and helpless, but he just smiled, giving her a look that was almost pitying as, with a wave of his wand, he dismantled her mechanical limbs and left her to sprawl on the ground.

 

Move, Fiore, something in her screamed, move or you will never move again. She didn’t move though, it seemed so difficult, and her hand was hurting so badly.

 

“Saber will likely escape regardless. Unless your servant manages to annihilate her before I end you then it’s… Oh, how would Lily put it? Game over, man,” he lowered his wand to her head, the light shining in her eyes and blinding her as he said, “The other master, I’m afraid, is a little bit smarter than you are. You had the misfortune and stupidity to make yourself the easiest target.”

 

So, Kairi Sisigou was going to live and Fiore Yggdemillennia was going to die.

 

These were, she realized dimly, the last words she was ever going to hear in this world.

 

A few seconds later, she knew, Chiron would turn and reach for her as he realized she was gone from this world. He’d used what precious mana remained to fight against Saber, or perhaps to search for her body, but it would be over for both of them.

 

Her legs and his immortality, nothing more than the average mortal wishes that everyone in this world possessed. She wondered for a moment, if he’d call it a tragedy almost Greek in nature.

 

All she could think though was that it wasn’t supposed to go like this.

 

It was never supposed to go like this.

 

* * *

 

“Fiore!”

 

Caules ran through the city, panting as he cried her name, not very smart he knew but dammit he hadn’t found her yet and he didn’t exactly have Lily to go search her out either. Explosions had sounded earlier in the small city, servants undoubtedly fighting one another, which meant that his sister was probably fighting some other master as well.

 

His sister who really didn’t have what it took to kill someone in cold blood, who might not have what it took to kill anyone or anything at all, facing against a mage who would have no such hesitations.

 

“Fiore!” he cried out again as he sprinted through the streets like a madman, keeping in the same direction he’d been in for the last few miles even though he had no idea if he wa seven going the right way anymore.

 

The more he shouted the more likely it was he’d draw someone attentions, friend or foe, and that wasn’t good either, but all his tracking spells and spirits had failed him. Which meant either she was being blocked from him or that she was already…

 

“Fiore!”

 

It was quiet now, quiet for a long time now, which meant that the others, that Fiore, had likely retreated. Except no one had called Caules yet back to the van waiting outside the town, his sister hadn’t called back, which meant she was probably still out here or that something had happened to the van instead.

 

“Fiore—”

 

He was cut off, stopped as a pale man turned casually around a corner. He was dressed in a dark suit, one that was composed of dark grays and black. He was tall, dark haired, with pale blue eyes that looked like Caules’ and his sisters, he could have been a relative the way he looked except…

 

Except that Caules had certainly never seen him before.

 

Caules stiffened, waited for the man to make a move, but he kept walking by him as if he didn’t care at all. Caules almost shook his head, started running again, except he realized that he hadn’t seen anyone else out, that a curfew had been instilled by the city and so it had been just Caules out here.

 

Caules and…

 

He turned, glaring, and saw that the man was looking back at him with a wand pointed at his head and a polite smile, “Really, two in one night, it really is my lucky day.”

 

“You!” Caules said, snarling, but the man just gave him an almost disappointed look. His eyes, Caules noticed, drifted briefly to Caules’ hand and the command seals inscribed there.

 

“You’ve left your behind and you think you can growl at me like that. Really, what do you think you’re doing?”

 

Caules stepped forward regardless, raising his hand to summon a spirit or else send out energy towards the man, “Where’s my sister?!”

 

He did not move, did not even flinch, instead his wand was still leveled at Caules head. Wands… they were not always the tools of mages, some used them, but often the tools of their cousins the wizards and witches. A wand in a trained hand could be beyond deadly, and the ease with which this man wielded it…

 

“Oh, you do look familiar, don’t you?” the man asked, and then he offered Caules a cheery grin and said, “You just missed her, I’m afraid.”

 

“What do you mean?!”

 

The smile was gone, only indifferent emptiness remained, and the man asked coldly, “What do you think I mean?”

 

Caules moved forward, surging forward with mana but the man stepped aside and deflected his attack easily and silently with his wand, leaving Caules to stumble forward unprotected into a wall.

 

His hand unprotected. If he lost that hand, if he lost the seals, then he couldn’t call Lily, Frankenstein, whatever she really was back. And with his back turned now, this was likely the last second, he had.

 

Squeezing his eyes shut and shoving his hand beneath his body he used his second command seal, disobeying the direct orders of his superiors, “Lily, I command you to come here now!”

 

His hand glowed, there was a great flash of light as Lily reappeared per his command, and he turned just in time to see her bare a great knight’s sword and then stop. She blinked, straightened out of her fighting stance, and looked at the man across from her, “Lenin?”

 

The man had stopped as well, his wand briefly lowering, and in stunned amazement, then fondness, he breathed out a name, “Lily, so I’ve finally found you.”

 

They looked… They looked at each other like old friends, Caules realized in growing horror. She looked at him much the way she had looked at Gilgamesh.

 

“Where the hell have you been?!” She said, poking him in the chest like a scolding housewife while he just raised his eyes at her impertinence.  

 

“Attempting to remain on the mortal plane without selling my soul to the black faction,” he said, sounding almost annoyed, “Do you have any idea how much magic that takes?”

 

“You can do that?” Lily asked, eyes bugging out of her skull, and Caules was left with the uncomfortable feeling that he himself would not have been long for this world had Lily realized it was possible. And that, perhaps after he had put her in a dungeon to be tortured, she would have that much less reason not to.

 

“If you’re willing to put in the required effort,” he said which…

 

Which meant the murder of mages, the murder of his sister, and himself as well.

 

“It was probably worth it,” Lily said, and her eye moved to Caules, and there was nothing in them, no hint of compassion, friendship, or even pity as if he had dug his own grave long ago, “Team black sucks.”

 

“Lily!” Caules cried, hands shaking as both turned to look at him, “Lily, please, please remember…”

 

She needed him, them, if she wanted the grail then she needed their help and wouldn’t last long at all without her own source of mana. Especially not with her level of power, if she did anything of significance, then her mana stores would run out sooner rather than later. She needed a master, and Assassin couldn’t be it either, only a human mage or else Caster could wield a servant. She needed him, even if she didn’t trust him at all.

 

If she didn’t kill him now, let him kill Caules then…

 

Caules squeezed his eyes shut, screamed at her and raised his hand once again, “Lily I command you to—”

 

A flash of green light and then a dull thud as his body hit the ground, while his servant, for the moment, remained.

 

* * *

 

And as Jeanne and Gilgamesh entered the church of Shirou Kotomine they found it empty, removed of everything but traps for a human mage and the lingering presence of a priest who was not a priest at all, while miles ahead of them the Hanging Gardens of Babylon ascended into the sky towards Yggdemillennia castle and the great siege that would begin the holy grail war.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to AlleyKat2014 on fanfiction for the ongoing support to this fic.

Gilgamesh stood in what was perhaps amazement or else an anger so large that it stunned him, “That elf witch pretender queen has kidnapped my gardens.”

 

Jeanne was already running, the empty church abandoned for all it was worth, chasing after the castle in the sky swiftly making its way towards the Yggdmillennia castle on the outskirts of Trifas.

 

It was an ominous, red, glowing thing. A great demonic eye in the heavens looking down upon the earth in judgement, and though Jeanne had no inherent reason to distrust red over black, she nevertheless saw it as an ill omen. A physical sign, perhaps, that red had always intended to stray from the rules of the war long before their attempted assassination of her and refusal to meet her within the church.

 

Gilgamesh either found it beneath him to sprint or else was still too enraged to move from his position staring up at the sky like a fool as he repeated, “That she-dog has stolen the Hanging Gardens of Babylon for this mockery of a war! She has not simply taken any city, she has stolen my city!”

 

Yes, Jeanne had gotten that point, that if it had been anything but the Hanging Gardens Gilgamesh would have likely been far less personally offended. Still, she was swiftly falling behind, not nearly fast enough through the fields and forests to keep even in the shadow of the castle. More, from a distance she could see bones of the dead, of men and demons, dropped from the fortress to the earth below where they assembled themselves into skeleton warriors to lay siege upon Yggdmillennia.

 

The war that Jeanne had thus far only glimpsed in visions had now begun in earnest.

 

The rose of the war was blossoming and what poisoned heart it truly contained, whether the grail itself as Lily and Gilgamesh seemed to believe or something else entirely, was unknown to her.

 

“I suppose there’s nothing for it.”

 

Jeanne looked up, startled, as Gilgamesh caught up to her. Not, she noticed to her profound irritation, by sprinting as a normal man or hero might, but instead lounging upon a golden hovercraft like a king. Because Gilgamseh, king of heroes, would never stoop so low as to ride in anything other than style.

 

“Well, schoolgirl, are you coming?” he asked, golden eyebrow raising as he poured himself a drink as if he were merely cruising about town.

 

Jeanne was very tempted to deny him, if only to see the look on his face.

 

As it was, she asked dully as she ran, “Schoolgirl?”

 

She had been called many things in life and since her death, prophet, maid of Orleans, and witch among them. Only Gilgamesh had ever had the audacity to call her a schoolgirl.

 

“What else am I to call you?” Gilgamesh asked as if he had all the time in the world to debate such trivialities, “You claim neither the title of warrior nor king, and I highly doubt you wish for me to simply call you Jeanne.”

 

“Please refrain from using my Christian name, King of Heroes,” Jeanne replied automatically and tersely, much to his apparent amusement. Jeanne had the horrible feeling, only growing over the past few hours, that Gilgamesh considered her a friend.

 

Whatever it even meant to be a friend of Gilgamesh of Uruk.

 

“Then schoolgirl, I’m afraid, you remain.”

 

She supposed, though it irritated her, that she could not argue with that. Given that she had no inclination to give him the title of prophet or saint to call her then she had to settle for what she was given. She just wished what she was given was less… pitiable.

 

“Well, are you coming?”

 

Jeanne sighed, gripped her banner tighter in her gauntlet covered hands, and resigned herself to accepting aid from a rogue servant of all things. Ordinarily she would rebuff him for his clear lack of neutrality, but time was slipping away from her, and Gilgamesh had proved he was not aligned with either the black or the red.

 

He certainly had his own agenda, but in this strange war, that made him neutral enough.

 

With a small nod she launched herself onto his floating platform, skidding to a halt just behind his throne, grabbing on just in time as the craft flew forward at a far faster pace than before to allow them to gain on the castle.

 

Still, with the wind whipping through their hair and the castle ahead she could not help but look at him and ask, “Are you truly aiding me for your own pettiness alone, Gilgamesh?”

 

He was quiet for a moment, giving her a rather flat look as if it was now his turn to find her audacious, but she had never pretended to be less than she was or to dance around words. A flaw, perhaps, but Jeanne had neither the time nor patience for such verbal dances.

 

Finally, he said, “I have said before, though you undoubtedly will not believe it, that you remind me of my wife. Were I simply as petty as you imply then I would have destroyed my own gardens without hesitation rather than see them in the hands of a thief. For your goals, whatever they may be, you have the chance to meet the priest Kotomine while he remains alive.”

 

Unless, of course, he was bluffing and did not have a phantasm capable of destroying the gardens. Still, as arrogant as the man was, thus far Jeanne did not believe he was inclined to bluffing or overestimating his own abilities.

 

Certainly, he believed he was capable of it.

 

And strange as it was, she supposed that was worth something, from him. Given his legend she would have thought such actions, even perhaps for Enkidu, would have been impossible. So, she could only incline her head, nod, and take his action for the graciousness that it was, “Thank you.”

 

She had always been isolated, kept apart by her position and by God, and thus had felt like an island among her family, the dauphin, and the troops she had fought with and inspired. Friendship had never been an easy, or perhaps even a known, thing for her.

 

Not since she was thirteen in her family’s garden all those years ago.

 

Perhaps she was not simply Gilgamesh’s odd friend, but perhaps, in his own strange way, he was her friend as well.

 

* * *

 

He looked smaller than he had in life, Lily thought, which was rather amazing as in life Caules Yggdmillennia had looked quite small. His glasses had fallen from his face, cracked now on the pavement and just out of reach of his still fingers. There was no blood though, no sign of distress, only the body of a boy on a street.

 

It’d hurt more than she’d expected it to, more than killing Kirei Kotomine had. She’d thought it’d be the same, a brief sort of hollowness, and then trudging forward toward the final stage prepared for Emiya and the holy grail.

 

She hadn’t realized how different those circumstances had been.

 

There Lily had already existed in the world, hadn’t been summoned from death or some other plane but instead simply from England. She’d had her own body, her own limitless magic, and being tied to Kotomine had been formalities and command seals.

 

She didn’t really exist in this world, was made of magic and light just like every other servant, and all the power she drew didn’t come from herself but instead came from a boy who was now dead.

 

When he’d hit the pavement, it’d been like tearing out her own heart.

 

She took one deep breath then another, reveling in the scent of the night air, the air she hadn’t thought she’d breathe in so soon. They’d had more patience than she’d expected, a night, a day, and then another night she’d been rotting inside that dungeon with the Marquess de Sade as a host.

 

God only knew how long it would be if it was left to them, if Wizard Lenin hadn’t forced Caules’ hand out of nowhere.

 

“Are you alright?” he asked, giving her a peculiarly fond and soft look rather than the irritated expression she had expected at getting herself summoned into another goddamn grail war.

 

“Peachy,” she responded drily, clenching and unclenching her fists as she forced the holes in her palms to heal themselves. Which itched far more than she expected it to, obnoxiously so, really.

 

His eyes moved to her hands, to the closing wounds, and seemed to reach the correct conclusion on his own. That Lily had lasted about as long as one could expect under the thumb of a family of despot mages and that there had been a reason she hadn’t lifted a finger for Caules.

 

She sighed again, crossing her arms, and taking stock of her situation.

 

She had teleported, well really more been yanked, to some city that probably wasn’t Trifas. Caules was dead, Lily was no longer his servant, she also wasn’t in a torture dungeon porn basement anymore, and the holy grail still rested in Yggdmillennia castle.

 

“Whatever you’re thinking I suggest you stop it at once,” Wizard Lenin said, cutting into her thoughts.

 

Already he was disposing of Caules’ body, forcing it into dust and light so that only the pavement remained. He kept his eyes on her though, that pale translucent blue that always seemed to be able to see to the heart of everything.

 

“We were summoned into this world, Lily, for better or worse you are reliant on the magic of a master. Unless some other poor fool of a master claims you as a servant any magic you use now comes from your own limited life force. Use too much and you’ll disappear from this world entirely.”

  

* * *

 

Disappear? She assumed she would depart back to her own home world then, that at least had been her initial idea, but now that he said it she had the thought that maybe she’d go somewhere else or would just… Disappear…

 

She was using her own life energy, after all, whatever that was worth here. If she used more than she had then would she even end up in a train station?

 

“I’ve unfortunately been summoned as Assassin, which means I can’t claim you as a servant,” Wizard Lenin added with a sigh, standing from his crouched position so he could properly look down at her.

 

“So then, it’s only a matter of time.”

 

“Unless you suck the very life from enough hapless mages or servants,” Wizard Lenin said, clearly implying that this was the gruesome means by which he had lingered in this world.

 

“Somehow,” Lily said as she looked at his hands covered in metaphorical blood, “That does not sound like my particular cup of tea.”

 

“I didn’t say it had to be your cup of tea,” Wizard Lenin scoffed brushing dust off of his impeccably dark outfit that made him either look like he was dressed for a funeral or else a fashion show, “I only have done this much looking for you.”

 

“Looking for me?” Lily asked, a little baffled, much to Wizard Lenin’s apparent annoyance.

 

“You disappear in the middle of a sentence, which of course has my golden self-proclaimed brother-in-law breathing down my neck until he disappears only a few days later. Of course I came looking for you and the end of the goddamn world! The last thing we needed was you under yet another mage’s command when they figured out they had infinite power at their fingertips.”

 

“Oh,” Lily said dumbly, “Right.”

 

She hadn’t really thought about that, well, she had she supposed in the beginning when the memory of Kirei Kotomine had been nice and fresh but it’d almost slipped her mind later. Caules had just been so… clueless. He’d been so insistent, for the longest time, that Lily was something in his own power level and then he’d gone and thrown her in the dungeons for bad behavior.

 

It hadn’t even occurred to him to start abusing Lily’s vast and terrifying arsenal of abilities for his own benefit.

 

It’d only occurred to him that if she pushed too hard she might destroy herself…

 

And now he was dead and his words ironically true.

 

“Right,” Wizard Lenin sneered, “Honestly, Lily, you could have simply said no!”

 

“And let someone else get the grail?!” Lily balked, now taking a step forward towards him, throwing her hands wildly in the air at the very thought of the catastrophe that would happen in that case, “And use it to blow up everything?”

 

“No one, Lily, has ever retrieved the holy grail!” he spat, “Not in four holy grail wars and certainly not in this one!”

 

“Well, that’s comforting—”

 

“It should be, it at the very least means that you do not have to risk—”

 

“It’s a risk of infinite stakes! If even one of them gets it and uses it what do you think will—”

 

“Then let the damned king of Babylon deal with it! Let me deal with it! You do not put yourself under the command of a dog of a mage!”

 

They both stopped, breathing heavily, and almost unwillingly Lily’s eyes drifted to the spot where Caules had so recently been. She wondered if his family would even think to mourn him, the sister probably, but anyone else…

 

Well, they had seemed more or less the kind of family accustomed to eating one another.

 

Quietly, closing her eyes, Lily said, “It must be destroyed, Lenin.”

 

“You didn’t manage it last time,” he said but Lily said nothing to that, forced herself to remain calm, objective, and pragmatic.

 

“They have the greater grail already, a wish is basically within their grasp, and I must manage to destroy it this time.”

 

She stepped towards him, grabbed his hand in her own, this war bereft of the command seals he’d worn in the last grail war, “Lenin, if any of them get it, even if they’re the best of people… We don’t have a choice this time, I don’t have the option of failure.”

 

“You won’t make it,” he said, a hand drifting softly through her curls, “You’ll write yourself out of this world before you have a chance to get close to the thing.”

 

Borrowed time and borrowed magic.

 

Lily, slowly but surely, was already leaking out of this world.

 

“Still,” Lily said, leaving unsaid that she had to make the most of the time and powers she was given, just like the rest of them.

 

She stepped away from him, steadying herself for the teleportation and the drain she knew would come with it, when she was a few feet away she stopped and looked him over. As always he looked coldly competent, perhaps more in his element than he did even as Voldemort.

 

With a slight waive and a smile she said, “By the way, if I do happen to die in glorious battle, if you have a chance do try and destroy it for me. After all, I kind of like the world and I’d hate to see something happen to it.”

 

Before he could answer or even open his mouth she was already gone, hurtling through time and space towards Yggdmillennia castle and whatever hidden sanctuary the holy grail had been left to rot in.

 

* * *

 

“We should have stolen a faster car!” Mordred shouted over the roar of the engine which in itself was not all that different from the thundering of horses’ hooves, “They’ve started the party without us, master!”

 

Sisigou had little to say to that, too busy cowering in the passenger seat and clinging to the leather interior of the hunk of junk they’d stolen in Sighisoara. God, Mordred would have killed for four-wheel drive, as it was he was swerving like a maniac to avoid budding golems, skeleton warriros, and homunculi by the barrelful.

 

Not that he’d had any idea what a car or four wheel drive was before this whole grail war thing but he still would have killed for them.

 

“Are you sure you have that rider skill?” Sisigou shouted, sweat dripping down his brow as yet another skeleton warrior crashed across their windshield and over their hood.

 

“Damn straight I do,” Mordred said with a determined grin as he tried to drive as the crow flew towards the battlefield, “And we’d be there already if I wasn’t riding the equivalent of a crippled mule!”

 

Not that they’d had much of a choice, getting out of dodge it’d been pretty clear that it was the closest care on hand or nothing, but they were paying for it now and Mordred would have killed even for a good horse.

 

The important bit was that once again Mordred and his master were missing the goddamn war and if they’d just stayed put and avoided getting shot at by Archer and somehow missing Assassin completely then this wouldn’t have happened! They’d done that detour for nothing!

 

“I am going to kill so many servants when we get there,” Mordred said under his breath, cursing God, cursing his mother, cursing his father, Merlin, the man in black, anyone he could think of that had delayed his arrival to the battlefield and his rightful wish of confronting the sword in the stone, “I am going to kill all of them for having the goddamn nerve for starting without us!”

 

“I’m sure that was the first thing on their mind,” Mordred’s master unhelpfully cut in, as dry and sardonic as ever.

 

“Shut up, master, you’ll bite your tongue off!” Mordred said after a particularly gnarly turn that had said master pressed against the passenger window screaming in mortal terror.

 

Which, honestly, Mordred had ridden faster and more furious on horses. You’d think Kairi Sisigou was a pansy incapable of handling any kind of excitement by the way he was shrieking let alone a mage who’d volunteer himself for a grail war. Well, that was why Mordred supposed that was why they were a team, he could sit there and summon creepy dead shit and Mordred could get them to the goddamn battle on time.

 

It was in the middle of shifting gears and avoiding yet another golem that it happened. It, of course, being a girl falling out of the sky and landing right on top of the hood of their car.

 

“Shit!” Mordred cursed, breaking to a halt and hoping to mitigate the worst of the damage, or at least not run her over.

 

As the car screeched to a halt Mordred took a shuddering breath, trying to think. Mordred had an intense dislike of involving civilians in battle. For one thing, it simply had not been done in his time, or at least, not directly. Wars were waged against fellow knights of neighboring kingdoms, against castle walls, the civilians were the ones who suffered in the aftermath as soldiers would loot, rape, and pillage in the name of their king.

 

Arthur had strictly forbidden such actions, by his nobility and stoicism had inspired his men to refrain from it, but it was an expected norm.

 

That did not mean Mordred had ever liked it.

 

It was, in fact, one of his first commands to his own master. That whatever they did, wherever they went, however they intended to fight and win this grail war, they would avoid civilian casualties at all cost.

 

He had not realized at the time that Sisigou was a remarkably similar breed of man, even being a mage, and had been more than willing to accommodate Mordred’s ideals.

 

This was the battlefield though, a land made barren by magecraft and legendary warriors, where once there’d been open fields and forests there was now only a rock filled desert to serve for the birthplace of golems.

 

This wasn’t a place where any normal civilian would just crash down from the sky.

 

Except, Mordred thought dully, he hadn’t expected to defeat enemy servants simply by running over them with a car. Maybe he hadn’t though, slowly, painfully slowly, the girl was picking herself up from the ground and dusting off her dark clothing.

 

“Watch yourself, asshole!” Mordred cried out when it looked like she’d live, if in great pain for the next few days, “Some of us are driving here!”

 

The girl said nothing, just turned her face towards the windshield and…

 

“Mother of Christ,” Mordred said dumbly, and he could feel Sisigou struck dumb next to him, because in all the places to look they’d found the man in black’s woman.

 

She was as unnerving in person as she was in a photograph, maybe more so if Mordred thought about it. Her eyes had this particular unnerving glow in the dark that hadn’t quite been captured by a camera’s lens. Mordred had thought her eyes looked like his, like his father’s, but they didn’t at all.

 

They looked like something that didn’t quite belong in this world of mortal fools.

 

Without thinking Mordred stepped on the gas, accelerating this hunk of junk of a car for all it was worth, and intent on trampling over the enemy before she could really get to her feet. Without a word the girl lunged to the side, alarmingly quickly given her lean stature, and skid to a halt outside the range of the car.

 

“Master,” Mordred said calmly as he swerved the car around, spinning it to get them in position for another joust, “Now might be a good time to start shooting monkey fingers or whatever the hell it is you do.”

 

He had no comment for that, which was rather typical of him in the heat of battle, but instead loaded his shot gun and positioned himself at the passenger window for a drive by shooting. The girl however didn’t look alarmed in the least, in fact, Mordred would say she didn’t show any expression at all.

 

It was not quite the stoicism and determination of Arthur in battle, but something more resigned, something more unnerving for it. Like her battlefield lay somewhere entirely beyond Mordred and it was a battle she was destined to lose.

 

Still, she lunged again out of the way of the car, ducking under the bullets as well with a nimbleness that marked her as likely being the enemy Saber. Only, a Saber who for whatever reason hadn’t just drawn his damn sword.

 

Not that Mordred had either, but he had places to be and servants to kill. Besides, given the man in black, this one just irritated the hell out of him.

 

“Come on, is that all you’ve got?” Mordred asked as he swerved the car for yet another go, which, this car really couldn’t handle this kind of treatment. If it really were a steed the crippled mule’s knees would be buckling right about now.

 

The girl said nothing for a moment, just stared forward, then her eyes narrowed and finally moved into a stance that indicated she was about to at least do something. Unfortunately, that something wasn’t drawing a sword, a lance, or even a bow but instead raising her hand forward and without a word or a motion blowing up their car.

 

Mordred quickly tore her master out of there, shielding him with his body as the car exploded in a mushroom of fire and petrol, while the girl took the distraction for the opportunity it was to sprint off towards the battle.

 

“Did you just blow up my car?!” Mordred asked, donning his armor without even thinking, “Did that bitch just blow up our ride?”

 

“You hated our ride,” Sisigou noted as he brushed himself off.

 

“But at least it was a ride!” Mordred said, but he didn’t waste time, already he was hauling his master like a pack of potatoes over his shoulder. Oh, they were going to make it to the battlefield, Mordred wasn’t missing this fight for the world, and if he had to haul his master there personally on foot then by god he was going to do it.

 

And the first thing Mordred was going to do was strike down anything that even looked like it had red hair.

 

* * *

 

Lily, as she sprinted along, absently wondered if this was what normal people felt like. When you pushed past your limits, or even just brushed against them with your lungs burning and fingers shaking, was this what it felt like?

 

Lily hadn’t had limits for as long as she could remember, there’d always been this unnatural well of strength that greatly outpowered her physical abilities. If she was limited in any physical sense she could just bend the world around her to suit her needs.

 

It’d never seemed possible that it could ever run out or that she had to be wary simply by drawing too much power versus the consequences of her actions.

 

She didn’t like it.

 

She was lightheaded while her feet felt as if they were filled with lead, her hands were shaking even when she ran, she felt cold sweat pouring down her brow, and there was this feeling that if she stopped here and now she’d never get back up again.

 

Everything else, Arthur Pendragon reincarnated into the form of a scruffy foul mouthed biker chick who looked like she belonged in some racing franchise or another, or the impending battle on the horizon felt distant.

 

She’d missed, or else powered out, teleportation had been more draining than she’d thought and that left her sprinting towards the fortress and wherever the hell the grail was. That, or somehow, miraculously killing everyone else in this war before they could even think of touching the thing.

 

No, she’d find it and destroy it this time, it wasn’t a matter of having a choice. As dramatic as it sounded, failure was not an option.

 

Even if, more than in the chamber or with Quirrel, it felt as if failure was swift and inevitable. How ironic, in a world where she hadn’t been expected, had been continually underestimated and mistaken for a patchwork monster, she was going to die without honor or glory for a cause no one understood.

 

Fitting, in its own way.

 

She ducked under the cover of trees, clearly reaching the outskirts of the battle as skeleton demon warriors made their appearance, which of course Lily had neither the time nor energy to deal with.

 

How far away was the castle? It felt as if she’d been running for years and she hadn’t even seen it on the horizon yet. Plus, when she got back inside, she’d have to find the damn thing when she’d even gone looking for it when she’d had access to the place.

 

“I am too old for this garbage,” she huffed out to herself as, with what little energy she had remaining, decimated the skeletons around her.

 

“If you prick us, do we not bleed?” a voice called out from the shadows, and Lily lifted her head to see the figure of a caped man begin to form at the edge of the clearing, “If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

 

A man appeared, ordinary looking enough, save for the outfit out of place and time as well as his delighted grin directed towards her, “Lily, hero without cause or country, this barren stage has been a lonely place without you.”

 

Lily straightened, unwilling to speak, unwilling to even guess with her pounding head and heaving lungs who this was supposed to be and why she wasn’t the only person in this war who thought to quote Shakespeare for the occasion.

 

“Oh, no words?” the man ask, tilting his head and giving her an almost puzzled look, “I had expected plenty, perhaps my own for that matter, from your lips. But perhaps, for once, you believe that brevity is the soul of wit.”

 

He answered for himself with a small, almost amused, smile, “Ah, but then, you are the type to march to your destruction with a stoicism that the prince of Denmark could only envy. No madness, no wailing, no grief for you but instead a steady march into the very jaws of Hell. We have been here before and will be here again, isn’t that what’s going through your mind?”

 

The man opened his book then, pages began to flutter out of it and towards her as Lily took a stunned step back, unable and unwilling to expend the energy to dispel whatever this was.

 

“Out, out, brief candle!” the man cried, but it sounded distant to Lily’s ears as the pages quickly began to close in, smothering her.

 

Then she was no longer standing in a forest but instead inside the glittering walls of Hogwarts. Only, they were not glittering tonight, instead they seemed washed out somehow as if in the washing machine of her mind they had been sent through one too many times.

 

What remained was sterile yet barren, barely containing a hint of the soul and life they had promised to so many.

 

She walked forward, and distantly she felt the sword of Gryffindor in her hand, the sign of knighthood she had taken unasked upon herself when no one else would bare the sword. The halls were silent, empty and unforgiving, as she walked downwards towards the chamber of secrets or whatever other dark forgotten realms existed inside Hogwarts.

 

“I have been here before,” she said to herself dully, because he was not wrong, she had been here so very many times.

 

Only if her life was a play it was a continually anticlimactic one. For, although she had been victorious most times so far, there had never been a return in triumph. Always, always, it was a quiet disappearance surrounded by suspicion and doubt.

 

In Lily’s experience, the hero was never truly rewarded, only given a sunset to quietly depart in.

 

This was simply another chamber of secrets, in its own way, and just as Morgan Gaunt was a kind of death that had been unlike any other this disappearance out of this parallel world would be another.

 

She was a mayfly here, just like any other, and she would be gone before they even truly learned her name.

 

What a pale and pathetic shadow she cast upon the earth.

 

“Why help these people?”

 

Lily turned, and she was in the forest once again, only this time the floor was covered in white swaying lilies. Gilgamesh looked in his element, dressed not in his gleaming armor but instead pale satin which he had likely worn in Babylon five thousand years ago.

 

He gave her a fond smile as he repeated a question he had often asked her, “Why do you insist on belonging to the curs of the world, Lily? You know they will not give you their gratitude, and if they do it shall be fleeting? What ties you to this role of hero you’ve taken upon yourself?”

 

“I…”

 

“They will never thank you,” she turned and Wizard Lenin was there as well, leaning against a tree, looking past her towards the sky with the weariness he so often tried to hide.

 

“They will spit on you, loathe you, revile you, and perhaps worship you but they will never truly have the capacity to thank you.”

 

“I do not do it for gratitude,” Lily said to both of them, but neither truly understood that, it had never been in their nature to understand why it was that she did what she did. Even in the face of all opposition.

 

“Leave them to their sour wine guzzled from their holy grails,” Gilgamesh said, reaching towards her and holding out a pale glowing hand for her to take, “We were made for greater halls and glories than this.”

 

“I don’t do it for glory either,” Lily said, but his hand was warm and she was so tired…

 

Still, she looked up at him, met those strange red eyes that spoke of two-thirds divinity and one-third humanity, and said, “It’s fate.”

 

She stepped back, a fire of determination lighting inside her soul, reinvigorating what little of herself still was left in this plane of existence, “It’s simply fate, immovable, non-negotiable, all-consuming destiny that no power on earth can fight. I will destroy the grail and save humanity, just like I blew up Lenin and once saved Britain, because somewhere in the great text of the world it is already written.”

 

With that the illusion dispelled itself and Lily was left staring at the flabbergasted and flamboyant thespian. He stared down at her with an open mouth, it opening then closing again, and before either could say a word he disappeared in a shimmer of light leaving only Lily behind.

 

“On the one hand,” Lily said to herself with a growing smile, “It’s nice to find a fellow appreciator of Shakespeare, on the other hand, did he have to be such a Lockhart-esque cad?”

 

Still, her battlefield, her prize as it was, lay elsewhere and without further delay Lily set off towards the heart of the battlefield and the holy grail.


	8. Chapter 8

“This is the battlefield,” Jeanne said, they were high in the night sky now, almost upon the castle, and the thought had simply come to her as she looked from the heavens down to the earth.

 

Gilgamesh gave her a curious look, but her words were not for him but instead for herself. Yes, this was the battlefield, the homunculus’ battlefield that she had seen in her vision.

 

Here he would kneel, fall beside the corpses of his brothers, and eventually succumb to his own wounds and death. Here was the fate Jeanne had thought to spare him from but, like so many of her visions, had failed to prevent.

 

A cruel fate, she had called it, to involve him a war he had never asked to be a part of.

 

If she looked down, would she see him wielding a borrowed sword?

 

If she…

 

“Schoolgirl,” Gilgamesh prompted, and Jeanne looked away, looked instead toward the castle and all her duties that came with it.

 

She had done what she could for the boy, she had guided him beyond the war, that he should return to it was his decision to make and not hers to take from him no matter how she might wish it.

 

Many young men, after all, had died in the barren fields left behind by battle. He would not be the first and he would not be the last either.

 

Still, she thought as she looked down at this war of servants, still…

 

* * *

 

“Hey, will you put me down already?!”

 

Mordred glanced up at his whining master, kicking against Mordred’s armored back like an overgrown toddler.

“Geez, Master, curb your enthusiasm,” Mordred said, throwing Sisigou onto the ground and motioning out in front of them, “We finally made it!”

 

It was a barren, soulless, place. The ground was nothing but rock littered with the bodies of golems and homunculi. Above their heads, the others in the red faction waited in their floating castle while on the ground servants battled one another with multicolored explosions. In other words, they were finally in the center of the maelstrom called war.

 

They may be late, but at least they hadn’t missed the party.

 

“And lookee here,” Mordred said with a grin as he glanced over to his left, “It looks like we found ourselves a servant.”

 

Mordred walked over to the quivering little boy, or maybe even little girl, who looked up at him with a rather familiar raw determination and anger. It was the kind of expression that he had so often given his own father, in those days when his adoration had finally given way to bitterness.

 

“At least,” Mordred said as he took in the pink hair, the scruffy face, and the lack of strength remaining, “I think it’s a servant.”

 

God, it’d take two seconds to send this one back to hell. Mordred came all this way for fighting and he gets some bullshit excuse of a servant who was practically on death’s door already. Mordred had not had this in mind when he’d signed up for this grail war thing.

 

“It’s probably their Rider, and you finally made it,” Mordred’s master said brushing himself off as he stood up, a bit too unconcerned by their friend the servant of black, “I’m turning back around.”

 

“Seriously?” Mordred balked, but the man was utterly unsympathetic as he merely shrugged, already walking away from the castle and towards safety, “You’re going to walk all the way back to Trifas without even watching me fight?”

 

“I’ll watch from a safer distance,” the man said, hands now in his pockets, “The last thing you need is for me to get shanked while you’re in the middle of a fight.”

 

True enough, if he went then so did Mordred, and that’d be a craptastically anticlimactic way to go. Still, while it wasn’t really out and out cowardice it was something that Mordred couldn’t quite stomach. Though he supposed it just went hand in hand with his master being a mage. Even if he was a surprisingly cool mage, he was still a goddamn mage.

 

“Fine, flee then, stay nice and cozy and leave the fighting to me.”

 

He was more than content to do just that and let Mordred get the last word in. He didn’t even turn around as he began jogging out towards the treeline and probably some graveyard on the outskirts of Trifas where he could hole up for a few hours.

 

Still, it irked Mordred. Here he was late, completely unappreciated, blown off by the man in black’s teenage lover, and the first thing he’d found was not the red-headed mystery woman but instead this pink headed page boy.

 

“Well,” Mordred said addressing his audience of one, “If you’re polite I’ll let you off with a simple beheading.”

 

More, to be frank and a little callous, Mordred had bigger fish to fry than this squirt.

 

The cocky piece of shit actually smiled at Mordred, forcing himself to his feet and raising forward an oversized lance, “Sorry, not really my style, I am a servant after all.”

 

God, his voice hadn’t even broke yet, either puberty had skipped past him entirely or Mordred actually was about to kick the ass of a twelve-year-old girl. Still, he got points for bravery and stupidity, which Mordred had always admired in a person.

 

His lance barely held up as Mordred sent his sword striking down, already his hands were shaking and they hadn’t even begun in earnest. Mordred’s voice was calm, measured, and without any exertion as he spoke, “So, Rider, you’re on team black right?”

 

“Rider of black, at your service,” the boy said with a toothy grin which Mordred returned only too eagerly.

 

“So, you have the scoop on all the bullshit your team has been up to,” Mordred said as he struck another blow that Rider only just managed to block. If Mordred really started fighting he could probably end this in the next strike.

 

Fortunately for Rider, Mordred wanted to hear the kid’s answer.

 

“I guess you could say that,” Rider said through gritted teeth, voice clearly strained and at the edge of his limits.

 

“Rumor has it Saber disappeared, Assassin’s a rogue asshole eating the mana of any mage he can get his hands on, and that the red headed girl he’s been looking on is a servant on your team,” Mordred said, and he could see the boy’s eyes widen as Mordred hit right on target.

 

“Sure,” the boy bit out, skidding backwards a few feet as Mordred lay into the blade, “Though it’s a little complicated.”

 

“Complicated my ass,” Mordred said with a sharp laugh, “What happened to Saber?”

 

A long pause, Rider desperately keeping Mordred’s blade away from his tiny body, and then a great cry as he answered, “There was… an internal conflict, I guess you’d call it, but Berserker swears that he died for what he believed in. And that’s the most any of us can do in this place.”

 

That didn’t sound like the whole story, that didn’t even sound like half of it, and Mordred would place money that the red-head was somehow involved in that kind of bullshit if only because she seemed to be involved in everything she touched.

 

Still, dead because of his own internal beliefs, or so Rider wanted to believe, as it was Mordred could hardly stand it, “Honestly, was he some kind of a backwater knight or something?”

 

Mordred kicked out, throwing Rider backwards with the force of his fury and then he was flying forward even as he raged, “That loser croaked before we could even cross blades, before I could see the whites of his eyes, for something stupid like that?!”

 

“And what did you die for?” Rider asked as he skidded over Mordred’s head, forcing himself once again to his feet and a fighting stance, probably his last stance if his body had anything to say about it.

 

When Mordred spoke his voice was bleak, the dust of a thousand years lurking in his voice, the echo of his father’s fateful words when looking down at his only son, “For something far worthier mere ideals and dreams of glory.”

 

Too swiftly the boy was disarmed, staring death in the face defiantly, as he must have stared it down defiantly when he had lived as a mortal man. That was the trouble though, Mordred thought as he raised his blade to the boy’s quivering neck, this was a mere mortal man standing among demigods and kings.

 

He had no place in this grail war.

 

Then Rider’s purple eyes lifted above Mordred’s shoulders and beyond him. There, standing behind Mordred and holding a blade as large as he was, was a skinny little homunculus dressed for a cocktail party rather than battle. The homunculus’ knees quivered, his hands shook, but still he held his sword in two hands to face Mordred.

 

“You came back…” Rider said, almost to himself, as his face grew slack with shock as well as horror.

 

The homunculus however, paid him no mind, as he shouted at Mordred with red eyes burning, “Your opponent is me!”

 

Mordred had nothing to say to that, his sword would speak for him. He swung it out towards the quaking thing only for Rider to miraculously call upon what energy he had left to block him. Rider had no words for Mordred though as he turned towards the boy, “You, what are you doing here?! Leave!”

 

“I came to—”

 

“If you’re about to tell me that you came here to save me then get going already!” Rider shouted even as Modred threw him to the side, “This is not a life for a life!”

 

No, Mordred thought, it was two lives for the price of one. Honestly, what was this? Mordred had signed up for a war, not kicking the shit out of toddlers. And this one didn’t even have the decency to be a servant.

 

“Well, homunculus, it looks like this is the end of the line for you,” and then Mordred’s sword was swinging down, much to Rider’s cry of outrage and despair, as the homunculus fell like all other men in all other battles.

 

And just like everyone else, with the light out of his eyes, he looked as pitiable and pathetic as a sack of forgotten potatoes in a battlefield.

 

“What an eyesore,” Mordred said to himself, turning to face his first opponent, now quivering with unrestrained fury as he pushed himself once again to his feet.

 

“Damn you, Saber of red!” tears of fury gathered at the corner of Rider’s eyes even as he hefted his lance through will alone, “I will never forgive you!”

 

Mordred had been unforgiven for far worthier causes than the death of a boy fool enough to play tourist in a battlefield. He’d entered this war of his own volition, challenged Mordred for the protection of a servant and the holy grail, he had marked himself a something other than a civilian and thus paid the price.

 

Rider’s sword was weak, held up only now by passion and fury, and in the end he was not nearly the swordsman that Mordred himself was. Mordred barely had to try before his sword ran through him, and then there was only dust, light, and the unnerving quiet that came after a battle was ended.

 

“You,” it was quiet, unnervingly so, but filled with the same spiteful venom that had been in Rider’s voice.

 

Mordred turned and there she was, the lady of the hour, the girl with the red-hair and no sword to her name.

 

“Finally,” Mordred said to himself as he raised his sword once again, “I didn’t think I’d run into you so soon after you blew up my car. It’s good to know that you, unlike the other guy, doesn’t avoid a fight.”

 

* * *

 

Lily’s hands were empty, her head too light, but all the same the only thought that remained in her head was that he was dead. The homunculus who had escaped from the castle, who Lily had practically thrown out of the castle at her and Rider’s expense, was now dead. Gutted like a fish and thrown the ground like he’d already been rotting.

 

And Lily, running up to the battle, conserving what little life she had left to her had done nothing even as he’d fallen.

 

Done nothing even as the swordsman servant had then moved onto Rider who had barely had enough strength remaining to even put up a fight.

 

“Come on,” the swordsman mocked in that high, clear, voice that was all too similar to Arthur Pendragon’s of the last grail war, “Don’t tell me that’s all you’ve got.”

 

Metal boots walked closer, clanking on the rubble, stepping without care in the blood of the dead homunculus, “You’ve got to have some sort of weapon on you, even if you aren’t Saber.”

 

She had looked like Arthur Pendragon, almost like a clone really, the wheat-blonde hair was braided into a different, scruffier style, the voice had changed and the accent and diction with it, but it was Arthur Pendragon’s face and eyes that had met hers.

 

There was a cruel anticipation in them that had been absent in the once and future king, a bloodlust and joy in the cruelties of war and battle, and even now with two dead at her feet all she did was turn towards the next battle.

 

“I should have killed you,” Lily said to herself, fingers twitching, face burning even as she stepped towards the woman knight, this mocking doppelganger of a far greater woman.

 

The homunculus had lived, had fought for life and won it, only to die so pitiably only days later. There was, perhaps, some greater metaphor for the futility of life hidden within here but Lily was not in the mood to search for it.

 

“I should have killed you!” Lily repeated, the edge of her vision going black even as she rushed towards the swordsman barely dodging out of the way of the swinging blade. The knight laughed, barely having moved an inch, and Lily noted now that her helmet had devil’s horns on it.

 

“Are you kidding?” the knight from hell asked with growing mirth, “Are you just going to tackle me and dodge all night? Is that your plan? At least those two managed to hold a blade against me, unlike you chicken shit.”

 

“No,” Lily said quietly, turning back to meet the woman, however she did not draw the sword of Gryffindor or anything else.

 

No, instead Lily allowed time to still for herself. She tasted the blood in the air, felt the rubble beneath her feet, she felt every aching bone in her body and every bit of air in her lungs. For this single, glorious, instant Lily felt all there was to feel in life.

 

There was an undertow of life and magic carrying her away from this world, back to where she had come from if not further away than that. It whispered to her now, even as it pulled at her very soul, and as Lily lifted her hand its knowledge poured out of her mouth, “You will never be worthy of your father.”

 

And just like that, with more power than Lily could afford to use, Mordred the incestuous bastard son of Arthur Pendragon was gone from this earth just as so many before him. Lily turned painfully slowly then away from the battle and towards the castle, towards the grail, stumbling forward even as she felt her legs disappearing into flecks of light.

 

“So, this is it,” she said to herself as she walked.

 

“This is the hill I choose to die on,” her voice was growing fainter, even in her own ears, and the dead were not listening anyway. No, they were already gone, as she herself was slowly leaving this world when there was still so much to be done.

 

Lily believed in this world though, despite all its cruelties, she believed in it in a way that she didn’t think many did. That was the trouble with the grail, it tempted too many to remake the world into something far worse or else something far more palatable. It tempted degenerates and saints alike, and it would produce a similarly wretched outcome for both.

 

Only someone who wished for the world as it was could win the war.

 

“And it won’t be me this time,” Lily said with a small laugh, finally stumbling to a halt as she looked down at her hands, even now slowly disappearing into flecks of light.

 

Oh, that probably should have been relieving. For once it wasn’t Lily’s problem, not really her fault either, but in this case she couldn’t fix it even when she’d expected it of herself. It wasn’t though, relieving that is, instead she felt as if her heart was tearing itself in two.

 

Just as she had once, long ago, in the chamber of secrets with the basilisk Lily was now staring in the face of her own failure.

 

She would have to leave the grail to the rest of them. To Wizard Lenin, to Gilgamesh, and who knew perhaps even to Jeanne D’Arc. She would have to have faith though, faith in something other than herself for once, that they could do what had to be done.

 

“Still,” she said even as she disappeared from this realm, “What had I expected when I entered a holy grail war?”

 

And just like that, like a tree falling in the woods with no one to hear, Eleanor Lily Potter blinked out of existence from this world.


	9. Chapter 9

The hallways were grand and opulent as any palace, however, they were cast in shadow which made them seem forbidding and narrow. Not good terrain for any fighter, saving, perhaps, Assassin.

 

Still, even as Gilgamesh and Jeanne navigated their way inside Jeanne expected the red faction to return at a moment’s notice to fight here just as they did on the battlefield below. To bar her access to their enigmatic director, as they had since the very beginning of this holy war.

 

For now, though they must have still been occupied with the siege of Yggdmillennia and whatever attempt they made to sack the fortress and claim the greater grail hidden within its depths.

 

One or two servants were likely to remain within the castle, but, Jeanne thought as she spared a glance for her companion, Gilgamesh could and would like be more than enough to handle them. Even though, they were in fact, his own comrades.

 

He glowed inside the dark, like a lantern crafted of delicate opaque glass, so that Jeanne did not even have to truly peer into the darkness to mark her way through the halls. She could only hope that God was guiding her true, into the heart of the place and the iron throne upon which the priest Kotomine would sit.

 

He was somehow keeping pace with her, a few steps behind as he leisurely strolled in his golden splendor, but not so far behind that she lost track of him either as she darted ahead. There was no sense of urgency in him though, no sense of danger for what they were doing, and at once that both made Jeanne terribly fond and terribly exasperated.

 

He was a man who, even more than she herself, was always certain that God was on his side and he would be victorious. For Gilgamesh of Uruk, failure was not even a concept.

 

Except, then, suddenly he stopped.

 

“Archer?” Jeanne said, stopping in time with him to meet his eyes. He didn’t seem to see her, his strange red eyes were instead wide, seeing nothing as he peered ahead into the dark. His fingers twitched in their golden gauntless, nerveless.

 

“Gilgamesh?” Jeanne repeated, stepping forward, grasping her flag tighter as she prepared for whatever silent threat it he sensed. There was nothing though, the halls were still empty, the servants still below them in the fight, and no defenses yet to meet them that were not a part of the castle itself.

 

He turned to look over his shoulder, slowly, as if he had been stabbed in the stomach and only just now felt the shock of it. Softly, in a tone she did not know he could use, he asked, “Lily?”

 

“Gilgamesh,” Jeanne said, more forcefully, and this time he did look at her and seemed to mark her image, “We must hurry, they will not dally much longer.”

 

“She never came to Trifas,” he said slowly, not quite as slow as before, but as if this realization only just occurred to him, “We stayed all night in that squalid tavern and she never came.”

 

“Gilgamesh!” Jeanne said, “I am sorry, my friend, but we do not have time for this. Your wife will wait for you.”

 

“Yes,” Gilgamesh said slowly, a strange wobbling smile cast across his features, “Yes, she will wait for me. As Enkidu has waited five thousand years, she, too, shall wait.”

 

It was the wrong thing to say, Jeanne realized, insensitive and cruel and unworthy of both of them. Gilgamesh’s shock though seemed to be giving way to rage as his features darkened, and there was the king she had always suspected him of being, a haughty arrogance and righteousness that could not be dissuaded or defended against.

 

“I had told her, that they were unworthy, as I have always told her they were unworthy,” Gilgamesh said, and he glowed brighter with every word, no longer a lantern but the sun itself fallen to the earth, “These pitiful mages, their arrogant servants, they shall pay for this tenfold!”  

 

“She is not dead!” Jeanne said, before correcting herself at his wild and accusing eyes, “You do not know she is dead.”

 

“I would know,” Gilgamesh said, his voice now seeming to mock her as he glared down at her as if she was just as insignificant as all the rest, “She burns so brightly, of course I would feel when she was snuffed out of this world.”

 

As failure had been an anathema to him, Jeanne thought in growing realization, so was uncertainty. Whatever was true, he believed that his wife was now gone, just like that out of his sight and due to his belief it might as well be true.

 

A smile graced his lips and now he moved forward with the urgency of a mortal man, no longer so indifferent to this world of theirs, “First, I think, the priest Kotomine and then the black. But not Ea, they are unworthy of Ea.”

 

His swords emerged from the golden void, the Gates of Babylon, and began to plunder the hanging gardens he claimed belonged to him. Beneath the weight of a thousand noble phantasms from across the ages the walls crumbled inward, the floating castle collapsing and falling to the earth.

 

Jeanne could waste no more time convincing him otherwise, he was free to do as he wished in this war and if it was to kill both factions then perhaps Jeanne should let him. There was still her own task to accomplish though, to see this Kotomine, to discover the roots of poison within this war.

 

She darted forward, avoiding crumbling walls, pillars, the castle defenses, as well as Gilgamesh’s flying swords.

 

For a moment, perhaps, there was another shudder, a stop in the blades for a single moment of hesitation. However, the castle was already falling to pieces and Jeanne had no time to stop, only to move forward and finally come face to face with the man whose back she had seen in visions.

 

White hair, a small build, simple black robes of a priest, wide eyes that spoke of determination as well as a kindness that Jeanne had not expected to be inherent within him. On seeing him she skidded to a halt, stopping dead in her tracks, while he in turn regarded her as if he had been waiting for nothing else.

 

“So, you have arrived,” he said calmly, “A pleasure to meet you, truly, but you will forgive me if I am distracted for a moment. It seems Archer is insisting on causing trouble.”

 

He held out a hand, adorned Jeanne saw in horror with far more command seals than he should posess, the command seals of all masters, “Archer of red, king of heroes, I command you to cease fire.”

 

The swords stopped entirely, the golden gates, Jeanne saw out of the corner of her eyes, closed and the castle remained floating. No longer in pristine condition, but condition enough to remain airborne.

 

Golden light flashed beside her, and there he was, all rage and light as his lips curled at the sight of the priest and his command seals, “Kotomine, I should have known it would come to this.”

 

Jeanne however could only stare at him, at this man who should not be here, with wide and horrified eyes, “His name is not Kotomine.”

 

The priest, the sixteenth servant masquerading as Shirou Kotomine, Shiro Tokisada Amakusa only offered a pleasant sort of smile towards the pair of them, “Gilgamesh, as you can see, I am effectively your master now. If you insist on causing trouble, then I will have no choice but to remove you.”

 

There was almost a thrum in the air, a vibration as Gilgmaesh tried and failed via his own power, against the will of his master and the command given, to open the Gates of Babylon once again and rain the swords of heaven upon the earth.

 

Gilgamesh’s voice was measured, but it was not calm, instead it provoked and called to action from even the most impartial listener, “You would dare—”

 

“I have dared more than that,” Amakusa, the saint and servant who should never have been in this war to begin with, interjected, and once more he held out his hand, armed as it was with throwing blades, and commanded, “Archer of Red, Gilgamesh, twice I command you to kill yourself.”

 

“No!” Jeanne cried out but it was too late. She turned, slowly, and watched as for a moment Gilgamesh simply stood there in that same silent shock that he had been in the hallway when he had declared his wife dead.

 

Then he laughed, a loud, growing thing that had him tilting his head back, “So, it has come to this has it?”

 

“Even you, proud as you are, cannot defy the commands of a master,” Amakusa said with that same calm smile, that same utter certainty and faith in his own decisions, that God himself would bless his defying of the rules and whatever cruel ambition he sought that allowed him to discard lives so callously.

 

“No,” Gilgamesh hissed, “That is the price of this farce, as it has always been the price of this farce. But then, just as this is not the tale of my wife it is not my tale either. Fitting, I think, that we should both leave it here and now.”

 

He smiled then, even as the golden gates opened above him, “However, I do not intend to go quietly into the night.”

 

Amakusa’s eyes widened as Gilgamesh drew forth a great, black, sword that seemed to be made of a lifeless void. He threw silver swords towards Gilgamesh but they were deflected easily by great swords falling from the gate.

 

“By my own hand, Kotomine,” Gilgamesh mocked even as he poured his magic, his life, his light into the great blade, “Such a pity, that name, I always did like the other Kotomine so much better.”

 

“Gilgamesh!” Jeanne cried, clutching her banner tightly even as the great black pit that was his sword, the destroyer of armies and civilizations, expanded.

 

For a moment, as his strange eyes met hers, they were soft and they were fond. Human for all their color. His smile was that of a friend, the kind of friend she’d never truly known in life, and when he looked at her, he said, “Perhaps, Jeanne D’Arc, I shall see you on the other side as well.”

 

And then it the sword swallowed him whole, the floating castle, Amakusa, perhaps even the battlefield below as well as the holy grail itself, while Jeanne unfurled her banner and stood bathed alone in holy light against the sea of infinite and raging dark.

 

* * *

 

As Jeanne opened her eyes she was not in a castle, not falling to the earth, nor in rubble.

 

Instead she was in a train modern train station. Only, it was not a true train station, the air was too pure and too clear, and the station itself was unnaturally empty of both trains as well as people. Only one train remained, a single dark steam train waiting for passengers.

 

Sitting in front of it, on a bench facing the train, was Gilgamesh’s red-headed bride, the girl Lily.

 

“We didn’t get much of a chance to talk, did we?” Lily asked, looking over at Jeanne with far too knowing green eyes and a crooked smile that was almost like Gilgamesh’s and yet not at all. Still, she suited him, Jeanne could not help but think.

 

“No,” Jeanne said slowly, and, just as slowly, feeling the pain of wounds she could not see, she sat beside the girl.

 

“I couldn’t save him,” Lily said, “All that effort, for one boy, and I couldn’t even keep him alive.”

 

Somehow, Jeanne knew she was speaking of the homunculus, “Neither could I, though I tried.”

 

“We both tried,” Lily concurred.

 

With that they fell into silence, both staring forward at the train, perhaps waiting for the other to speak. The grail war, Jeanne thought, waited for Jeanne outside of this station. She could feel it pressing down on her back with an unbearable weight and with it an uncertainty she was not familiar with.

 

Who even remained to fight, she wondered.

 

If Amakusa, however he had become involved, was now dead and he had held the command spells then were all the servants of red banished with him? Yet, who remained of the black?

 

And was it even worthy of Jeanne’s time and effort to bother with it. This war had been out of her hands from the beginning, beyond her, as both sides had prepared sixty years for its arrival. Ruler, what a joke, she had never had the slightest chance at intervention.

 

“This is an odd vision,” Jeanne finally remarked.

 

“Is it?” Lily asked in a way that made it seem as if she was pondering Jeanne’s words as one might ponder just about anything, “I seem to always have out of body experiences involving trains.”

 

“I do not know why I am here,” Jeanne finally admitted, though not simply of this train station, of sitting beside Lily, but also the grail war itself.

 

“Do any of us?” Lily asked, “I for one always thought that was sort of the point of things. And, more to the point, why a holy grail is such a cheap thing. There is nothing in this world that is worth simply wishing for.”

 

Yes, Jeanne supposed there wasn’t. Anything too grand and humanity should have the right, no, the opportunity to earn it for themselves. Anything too mundane was cheap. And anything malicious, well, that was unobjectively evil.

 

Perhaps, Jeanne thought, this vision allowed her to finally understand why Lily had been so vehemently opposed not only to the grail war but the holy grail itself.

 

“If it has survived,” Jeanne said, “I shall see that there is no wish granted.”

 

And Lily smiled, as if there was no greater reason for this vision than that one simple realization.

 

“If you see him, give Lenin my regards,” she said, and then the station was fading into the mist, leaving Jeanne standing alone with her banner amidst the destruction of the holy grail war.

 

And there was not a hint, no single sign, of any servant or master remaining among them. Only a Ruler, and, perhaps, the greater grail.

**Author's Note:**

> A sequel to "The Demiurge" commissioned by AlleyKat2014 who asked for things to go down Fate/Apocrypha style with interactions between Lily and Mordred, Vlad, and Shakespeare along with Wizard Lenin and Gilgamesh getting pulled along for the ride. So, expect that, and death, expect a lot of death. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, comments, kudos, and bookmarks are greatly appreciated.


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